


The Seventh Born

by Lucky107



Series: The Seventh Born [2]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Delirium, Drowning, Extramarital Affairs, Gen, Introspection, Moral Dilemmas, Near Death Experiences, Non-Linear Narrative, Religious Fanaticism, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-06-11 01:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15304221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: It's an unseasonably warm night for September.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I have ever tried to write a chaptered fan fiction and it's a wildly ambitious project.
> 
> I apologize in advance if it should lull or fall flat: I don't want to make any promises that I can't keep.

A man in a finely-pressed uniform with a decorated breast snaps his fingers – one, two, three – in the expressionless face of Roberta Caine, but she blinks only once, slow and unseeing.

A second man, whose steady hand upon her trembling shoulder serves as the only barrier between her face and the damp earth below, shifts in his squatted position and hollers over the roar of the helicopter blades, “Do you know where you are, Deputy?”

There’s no response.

In behind his question people are running in every direction – most of them in identical uniforms and many of them armed with large rifles – in a scene that looks like a World War I reenactment, but there’s something poignant and raw that suggests otherwise.

A small stretch of stony beach opens upon a dock, visible just beyond the man’s skinny epaulette, and somewhere within Roberta’s mind she knows that she isn’t at the Atlantic Ocean.

No, this is Silver Lake.

She was only ten or eleven years old the first time she and her best friend had come up onto that stretch of shore.

It was their first time in a canoe without an adult’s supervision and their scrawny arms had felt like Jell-O by the time they reached the beach, burned from the midday sun. The area had been a public campground back then, and they were lucky to have been spotted by a camper with arms as thick as tree trunks who could pull the canoe out of the water all by himself.

Canoeing across Silver Lake just to enjoy a homemade picnic might sound silly in hindsight, but Roberta has never forgotten the sweet taste of those strawberry jam sandwiches.

The lingering taste of strawberry jam fades as the distant thrum of the outgoing helicopter brings her back around.

“It all began with the helicopter.”

 

It’s an unseasonably warm night for September when Roberta – ‘Deputy’ – Caine boards the helicopter outside of the Hope County Jail.

It’s half-past two in the morning.

That had never been a part of the plan, but a late inbound flight had delayed the entire operation by nearly six hours. Improvisation was a last-minute decision made in the name of saving Montana’s Department of Justice both time and money.

Deputy Caine sits opposite an out-of-town U.S. Marshal, Cameron Burke, for the duration of the flight.

The fit is so tight in the cabin that their knees knock with every jostle of the helicopter, which is why the portly county sheriff, Earl Whitehorse, elected to sit to the marshal’s left. Sheriff Whitehorse has every reason to suspect that their intimate accommodations might set Marshal Burke and Deputy Caine at odds before they reach their destination.

Sheriff Whitehorse has known Deputy Caine for fourteen years and he’s worked with her for twelve of them. He knows that she can be a real firecracker when it comes to people as egoistical as Marshal Burke. She can also become unpredictable and needlessly aggressive, a situation that he hopes to alleviate with his presence.

But Deputy Caine hasn’t said a word since the helicopter took off and, in the meantime, Sheriff Whitehorse stares uneasily out of his amber-tinted glasses into the night outside his window.

He finds it impossible to see much of anything past the thick fog that hangs over the Henbane River tonight, even with the intensity of the large plate moon’s blue-green light. The fog is so thick that it swallows up everything in its path, devouring the entirety of Hope County.

Well, everything except _him_.

The only landmark in all of Hope County that stands tall enough to be seen above the fog is a large concrete statue of Joseph Seed.

“Goddamn eyesore,” Sheriff Whitehorse says with traces of disgust and contempt as the statue comes into view. “Nobody knows when exactly it went up, but one day it appeared there on Angel’s Peak as if out of thin air.”

Deputy Caine’s head comes up from her mobile phone just in time to catch the bleached-white face peering in through the window and then the signal is cut, stopping short her third viewing of the incriminating video against the man the locals call _The Father_.

The video had been uploaded onto a popular video-hosting website on the Internet long before it was brought to the attention of Montana’s Department of Justice. There were people half-way across the world who lied awake in their beds at night and thought about the petrifying eyes of Joseph Seed, standing in front of that church altar and gouging a man’s eyes with his crooked thumbs.

And at half-past two on a foggy September morning, the Hope County Sheriff’s Office intends to surprise the most dangerous known criminal in America with a visit to that very church.

“You sure you wanna do this, Marshal?” Sheriff Whitehorse asks, sudden and without humour. Deputies Joey Hudson and Staci Pratt hold their breath in the helicopter’s cockpit in anticipation. “There’s still time to turn the bird around.”

Everybody is anxious for the marshal’s permission to stay the arrest and put in a quest for additional support.

As it stands, they’re too few men and too few guns to get any further than the compound gate, but Marshal Burke’s pride won’t budge on the subject. He waves the arrest warrant in his hand like some kind of flag and triumphantly asks, “You want me to ignore a federal warrant, Sheriff?”

“No, sir. I want you to understand the reality of the situation,” Sheriff Whitehorse corrects. “Joseph Seed, he’s not a man to be fucked with. We’ve had run-ins with him before and they haven’t always gone our way. Sometimes… well, sometimes it’s just best to leave well enough alone.”

There’s a long moment of pause before Marshal Burke retorts prudently, “Yeah, well, we have laws for a reason, Sheriff. And Joseph Seed is going to learn that.”

An uncomfortable silence breaks, the kind of silence that could get a man’s back up, and it’s suffocating.

Earl Whitehorse is a respectable man and officer of the law: he would never have agreed to put his deputies into such a dangerous scenario on his own accord, but if he speaks up against the federally-sent Marshal Burke it could cost them all their jobs. He would need all hands on deck before he even contemplated such a move, but Deputy Caine hasn’t said a word since the helicopter took off.

“Pratt, open a call with Dispatch.”

“Ten-four.”

Hope for a last-minute reconsideration is extinguished and all eyes return to the fog that looms so ominously outside the cabin doors.

“Whitehorse to Dispatch. Over.”

“Go ahead, Earl.”

Nancy Blackburn has been working Dispatch for the Hope County Sheriff’s Office since before Roberta Caine was born. Everybody on the force had come to adore her as if she were their own grandmother in time.

There was always something whimsical about her eyes that harkened back to days of old, as if they were a time machine and all one needed to do was believe in their magic to experience a small miracle. She had become the cornerstone that kept the Hope County Sheriff’s Office from dysfunctional ruin, and even just the sound of her voice over the radio static brings a welcome calm to the passengers onboard the helicopter.

It’s the smell of freshly ground coffee brewing on a chilly autumn morning or the rhythmic click, click, click of the old-fashioned typewriter at the front desk.

It’s familiarity.

It’s _home_.

“We’re approaching the compound, Nancy. Over.”

“Roger that, Sheriff.” There’s a momentary, but deliberate pause on the other end of the line. “Still planning to go through with this? Over.”

“We are – unfortunately – still trying to talk some sense into our friend, the marshal. Over.”

Marshal Burke rolls his eyes at Sheriff Whitehorse’s crude attempt at humour, and it’s then that Sheriff Whitehorse realises the marshal was never trying to impress _him_ with his cockiness. The smug little smile pulling at the corners of Marshal Burke’s lips is instead for Deputy Caine.

And much to the surprise of Sheriff Whitehorse, Deputy Caine smiles right back.

His mind involuntarily begins to pick at the loose threads of their carefully corroborated story about the delayed flight in from Missoula.

A part of him knows that it’s none of his damn business what went on because Deputy Caine is thirty-two years old and she can take fine care of herself, but another part of him – the part of him that watched Deputy Caine come up right here in Hope County – worries after her like the father he knows he has no right to be.

The call to Dispatch lingers like a memory until Nancy laughs dryly. “He’s lucky I’m not there. If you get into any trouble, you let me know. Over.”

“Ten-four. Over and out.”

From the cockpit Deputy Pratt purposes, “Maybe we should have brought Nancy along with us instead of the Probie. These Peggies wouldn’t fuck with her.”

“Son-of-a—”

Deputy Caine’s hands ball into fists, but she tapers off the knee-jerk response that dances on her lips.

It was made very clear to her over the course of her twelve years with the Hope County Sheriff’s Office that she needed to curb that short temper, especially among her colleagues, if she ever hoped to maintain a career. In their five years working together, however, Deputy Caine and Deputy Pratt have never been able to see eye-to-eye.

The feud had started simply enough: he had heard rumors about her from some of the seedier men in the county and thought he would test out their theory in person.

It backfired.

Ever since then their antics had devolved into a pattern of pettiness the likes of which would put grade school children to shame.

“Pratt—” Deputy Hudson reprimands on Deputy Caine’s behalf.

“Why do you keep calling them ‘Peggies’?” Marshal Burke interrupts, helping to alleviate some of the tension brewing between the deputies before it has a chance to swell.

“Project at Eden’s Gate. P.E.G. – Peggies,” Sheriff Whitehorse offers in spite of his growing impatience with the marshal’s ignorance. “It’s what the locals call ‘em. You know, they started off harmless enough a few years back, but now they are armed to the teeth. Hell, they’re just looking for a fight.”

The intensity of the look that passes between them in that moment would have created sparks on a drier night.

“Are you _scared_ , Sheriff?”

Something is definitely wrong.

Deputy Caine fidgets in her seat as the moment hangs, suspended in time, for what feels like an eternity.

There’s something much bigger – carrying far more weight – than the six-hour delayed flight from Missoula that hangs over the entire helicopter like a bad smell, and Marshal Burke is either too stupid or too proud to acknowledge it.

Nobody dares to breathe until Deputy Pratt’s voice cuts through the silence to announce: “We’re here. Compound’s just below.”

A large green church steeple reaches up through the fog like a beacon as the helicopter makes its descent, but little else can be seen. Two large bonfires burn bright on either side of the compound and the air is thick with the smell of burned rubber and something sweet, like cooked meat. The intensity of it all is enough to tie even the best trained stomach in knots.

The compound itself contains little more grace than a prison courtyard that hasn’t been serviced in years, left to decay like an urban jungle in the hands of the convicts left to rule their little patch of earth with rusty pitchforks and ass-backwards anarchy.

It’s their first glimpse into the reality of what they’re walking into.

“Last chance, Marshal,” Sheriff Whitehorse warns.

But Marshal Burke sighs irritably and declares, “We’re going in.”

The helicopter lands routinely enough given the low visibility of the night.

As the landing skids sink into the damp earth, curious bearded mountain men surround the helicopter, armed to the teeth with an array of assault weapons considered to be perfectly legal within the boundary of Montana’s state laws.

Peggies are, like any other American citizen, permitted to defend their property against potential aggressors by any means necessary.

On this particular night it just so happens that the law is the aggressor.

“Dispatch, are you still there?”

The helicopter’s rotors wind down overhead and the silence within the helicopter becomes deafening. Somewhere outside the cabin there are dogs barking, cruel and vicious and hungry for blood.

“Yes,” Nancy comes again. “Go ahead, Sheriff.”

“You don’t hear from us in fifteen minutes, send in everyone,” Sheriff Whitehorse says matter-of-fact and the first bite of fear sinks its rusty teeth deep into Deputy Caine’s gut. “Call the goddamn National Guard if you have to. Over.”

“Yes sir, Sheriff.” There’s another temporary pause. “I’ll be praying for you.”

The radio static cackles and then fades into silence.

“All right, listen up: there are three rules. Stick close, keep your guns in your holsters, and let me do the talking,” Sheriff Whitehorse explains, running them through a crash-course as everyone double-checks their firearm safety and steels their nerves for what awaits them outside.

“I’m going to take point as soon as we exit the helicopter on the basis of familiarity: these fine men and women of the Project do not take kindly to outsiders, but like I said, I’ve had a few run-ins with them. I’m the most familiar face we’ve got. I want Deputies Caine and Hudson on me at all times, and Marshal Burke, I want you to take up the rear in case there’s trouble.”

“What about me?” Deputy Pratt pipes up from the cockpit.

“Pratt, I want you to stay here with the helicopter. If things go sideways while we’re inside, you need to get the bird out of here and radio the situation into Dispatch,” Sheriff Whitehorse concludes. He turns directly to Marshal Burke to clarify sharply, “Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Deputy Caine?”

“I’m with you, Sheriff.”

The first wave of nausea comes over Deputy Caine once the cabin doors open and Marshal Burke offers to help her down onto solid ground.

He can feel her shaking like a leaf beneath his large hand and, for a moment, all of his arrogance evaporates, leaving behind the naked face of an uncertain man. It’s clear to him in that moment that they’re in way over their heads here, but the moment she steps out of the helicopter there will be no turning back.

“Don’t pass out on me now, Rook,” Marshal Burke says only for Deputy Caine’s ears. “Your sheriff wants you up front for the arrest and you wouldn’t want to disappoint him on your very first day.”

_Fat chance_ , Deputy Caine thinks, but she doesn’t say it.

Deputy Caine is the last obstacle that stands between Earl Whitehorse and the decision to stay the arrest.

If he were to receive her assurance right then that – her job be damned – they were not equipped to move on Joseph Seed, he would make the call without hesitation. He would usurp command from Marshal Burke and tell him to stick that federal arrest warrant where the sun doesn’t shine until they were given a properly equipped team.

But Deputy Caine and Marshal Burke have become locked into a high-stakes game of chicken under the guise of a noble pursuit to ‘uphold the law’ and they’re gambling on the lives of everybody present.

The moment her feet touch the ground is the moment their fate is sealed: they will be given no choice but to approach Joseph in his church and enforce the arrest warrant – and the only reason Deputy Caine hasn’t given Sheriff Whitehorse her assurance is because if she did Marshal Burke would look down his nose at her.

She casts off the large hand that cradles her elbow and leaps down out of the helicopter on her own accord.

“On me, Caine,” Deputy Hudson says with an anxious beckon. “Stay loose, huh?”

The chemistry between Deputy Hudson and Deputy Caine had been immediate upon Deputy Caine’s hire twelve years earlier.

They are by no means small women: on several occasions during their time with the Hope County Sheriff’s Office they had proven themselves more than capable of holding their own, but what they stand to face tonight is no scuffle. They can square their shoulders against the onslaught of verbal assault and try to let the nerves roll off of their backs, but there’s something in the air that makes _everyone_ feel small in the shadow of that looming church steeple.

It feels as if she’s walking on water as she tails Deputy Hudson across the compound. The shadows of all her worst fears lurk in the corner of her peripheral, _waiting_.

Deputy Caine isn’t alone in her unrest.

“Sheriff, I don’t like this—” Deputy Hudson begins.

Sheriff Whitehorse clears his throat and assures, “Everything’s fine, Hudson. Everything’s just fine.”

“Jesus Christ,” Marshal Burke complains from behind. “You’re wearing _badges_ , aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Deputy Hudson counters, cradling the shotgun under her arm. It isn’t enough to even the odds in the event that everything goes south, but it serves as a temporary beacon in a very desperate situation. “But they don’t respect badges much out here.”

“They’ll respect a nine millimeter.”

“Not every problem can be solved with a bullet, Marshal,” but even Sheriff Whitehorse’s hand rests idle on his gun.

As those large white church doors come into view amid the fog, it’s all Deputy Caine can do to put one foot in front of the other at an even, almost mechanical pace in order to avoid being left behind. A hum akin to a hive full of bees can be heard from inside the church to the familiar hymn of _Amazing Grace_.

The church is much bigger in person than it had appeared from the air and Deputy Caine has to turn her face up to see all the way to the top of that green steeple.

All of the knots in her stomach seem to unravel at once and, suddenly, everything feels _real_.

The humidity of the unseasonably warm night and the thick fog cling to her skin, damp and dewy and hot. There’s nary a trace of September’s gusty gales as the world pulls in and out of focus around her like a camera’s lens struggling to locate its subject. Bile rushes up into her throat so fast that it’s a wonder she has time to hide her face in a currant shrub before she loses her stomach.

The edges of her vision are both sharp and soft all at once as she pukes and, for a moment, Deputy Caine fears she might faint.

A steady hand finds her shoulder before it comes to that, though, and it pulls her back from the edge.

It’s Earl Whitehorse.

His handsome grey eyes are big and full of concern that he hasn’t let show all night. It’s an unadulterated fear of what might await them inside of the church, the kind of fear that a man like Joseph Seed can arouse within a man with just one look – even if that look is shared through the tiny screen of a cellular device.

The gravity of the situation catches up to Deputy Caine like a speeding bullet and she fears she might just puke again.

“If you want to head back to the helicopter—”

Sheriff Whitehorse isn’t asking for Deputy Caine’s permission to call off the arrest.

This is a question of whether or not Deputy Caine is ready for the weight of the responsibility that comes with the badge that he fastened upon her breast not an hour earlier – and in that moment Deputy Caine is not so certain that she is, leaning into a bush with the bitter taste of bile lingering on her lips.

But she lies.

“I’m fine.”

One hand finds purchase on Sheriff Whitehorse’s thick forearm while the other wipes the remnants of her fear from her lips and he offers her one last forlorn look as he escorts her back to the church front.

Marshal Burke has grown anxious in their absence: one hand idles on the door handle while the other sits on the gun at his hip, still holstered as per Sheriff Whitehorse’s previous instruction. There’s no certainty that it will stay that way. “What kind of show are you running here, Sheriff?”

In his contempt he shows no concern for Deputy Caine’s well-being.

“If we do this, we do it _my_ way,” Sheriff Whitehorse says as he eases the marshal back from the door with practiced finesse. “Got it?”

“Fine.”

“Hudson, I want you on the door: watch our backs. Don’t let any of these people get in. Caine, you’re on me. And _you_ —” Sheriff Whitehorse looks pointedly at Marshal Burke. “—just try not to do anything stupid.”

“Relax, Sheriff,” Marshal Burke says with a patronizing pat to Sheriff Whitehorse’s shoulder, as if he were speaking to a child and not a seasoned police officer. “You’re about to get your name in the paper.”

Deputy Caine steps forward into position, but Deputy Hudson catches her by the arm.

There’s a mixture of fear in her eyes: the fear of being left alone outside of the church with so many Peggies, the fear of actually having to fire the gun in her hand, the fear of never seeing her friend alive again. It’s been bubbling all night, but only now does it boil over, finding release in a desperate last attempt to change the course of the night that will leave a bruise on the skin beneath the fabric of Deputy Caine’s shirt.

It’s a raw and primal fear that catches up to Deputy Hudson with the same intensity it had as it caught up to Deputy Caine only moments before, and Deputy Hudson’s mind and body are just as out of synch. “You’ll be fine, Robbie Lee.”

_Robbie Lee_.

That isn’t proper protocol.

Protocol has always taken precedence over friendships on the job in order to maintain a façade of professionalism, but the Hope County Sheriff’s Office feels very far away in that moment and what Deputy Hudson needs right now is not a colleague, but a _friend_.

The coldness with which Deputy Caine wrenches Deputy Hudson’s clawed fingers free from her arm, however, creates the illusion that they’re total strangers.

“It’s just an arrest, Hudson,” Deputy Caine says without an ounce of confidence. “It will all be over soon.”


	2. Prologue

Roberta Caine awakens with a start.

It’s _freezing_.

She isn’t wearing any clothes except for her undergarments, which have been soaked transparent and cling to her freckled skin, bloated and puffy. Her hair sticks in large clumps and it tickles her face and neck, but when she tries, she can’t raise a hand to brush it aside.

There’s a white flash in her mind and she grimaces, shrinking back as if to protect herself against the impending impact of an explosion.

It never comes.

The smell of burning rubber and diesel fuel floods her nose and the fire – there’s fire _everywhere_ – burns hot against her cold, pallid skin. It’s scary and unpleasant and it threatens to swallow her whole, conscious thought and all.

Roberta knows she must escape before it’s too late and the fires consume her, so she runs, blind, into the dark forest whose shadows warp into long arms that reach after her ankles, determined to trip her up.

The fear keeps her running long after she loses feeling in her legs.

Everything feels numb.

 

Deputy Caine blinks once, twice as if to ensure that what she’s seeing is real.

Blocky letters carved into the chipped white paint of the church door read: _‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ say the Lord God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.’_

Sheriff Earl Whitehorse pushes open the door with one hearty heave and only a trickle of light seeps out of the church and into the compound. It’s candlelight, mostly, and it casts long, sprawling shadows off of old raven cages that hang from the ceiling rafters, like long arms reaching out for their ankles in order to pull them down into Hell.

The chorus of _Amazing Grace_ drops away one voice at a time as members of the congregation turn around in their pews to gawk at their uninvited guests, their eyes a mixture of wariness and fury.

“Something is coming,” Joseph Seed’s voice echoes. “You can feel it, can’t you?”

Nobody moves a muscle.

Joseph stands proud at the front of his church, half-naked with a rosary wrapped around his left hand.

The Rosary of the Seven Sorrows, Deputy Caine recognizes with a start, but she can’t make sense of _how_ she knows this given how dark it is within the church. The medallion catches in the candlelight, bobbing silver on a sea of midnight blues.

“We are creeping towards the edge and there _will_ be a reckoning. _That_ is why we started the project: because we know what happens next. They will come and they will try to _take_ from us: take our guns, take our freedom, take our _faith_.”

He raises his hand up into the air as if to beckon his guests closer and they take a single unanimous step forward.

With every subsequent step another pair of hungry eyes turn upon them, full now of the kind of fear that provokes a man to do unpredictable and often violent things. They’re on display for all of the Project to see – and everybody within the church tonight would gladly tear them limb for limb if they were given the word.

The most disturbing part of it all, Deputy Caine muses as she takes another shaking step forward, is that they wouldn’t even understand why it was they were doing it.

They would do it blindly out of devotion to _The Father_.

“But we will not _let_ them. We will not let their _greed_ , or their _immorality_ , or their _depravity_ hurt us anymore,” Joseph lectures, loudly, like a clap of thunder. “There will be no more _suffering_ —”

“Joseph Seed: I have a warrant issued for your arrest on the suspicion of kidnapping with the intent to harm,” Marshal Cameron Burke announces evenly, showing no visible signs of his fear. He remains true to his conviction that Joseph Seed is a man, just like any other, and thusly remains bound to the law of man. “Now, I want you to step forward – and keep your hands where I can see them.”

For a long moment Joseph looks at each one of them in turn, as if to study them – to _judge_ them.

“Here they are,” he concludes and he lifts his hands back up, slowly, but both are empty save for that rosary. “The Locusts in our Garden.”

His henchmen shift like sand in Joseph’s long shadow and the congregation becomes restless. Scared. Half-crazy men and women, most of whom square their shoulders around a gun, shuffle around the church like a horde of zombies until they establish a human wall between Marshal Burke and The Father.

“See? They’ve come for me,” Joseph says, his voice a booming echo in the empty church. “They’ve come to take me away from you. They’ve come to _destroy_ all that we have built.”

And that’s when the tide changes.

An unarmed man steps forward from the line and accosts Deputy Caine.

It’s a bold attempt to pluck her gun from its holster and he may have just succeeded, too, for Deputy Caine had been too caught up in the hypnosis of Joseph Seed’s speech to notice. Marshal Burke’s trigger-like reflexes allow him to shoulder his way in between the two before the man can manage and, built like a brick shithouse, he damn near breaks the Peggie’s arm for his effort.

The man cries out in pain before he retreats back into the crowd without his prize and that’s when all Hell breaks loose: there’s manic yelling from both sides of the line and firearms are brandished in a fast-mounting race for control.

They’re standing closer to the edge of collapse in this moment then they have been all night.

One wrong move and everyone will die.

Joseph smiles serenely.

Marshal Burke’s hand is on his gun before Sheriff Whitehorse can bellow, “Do _not_ touch that service weapon!” And it takes every ounce of self-restraint for the man to ease up on the familiar comfort of the gun’s grip.

Deputy Caine steals a cautious half-step back from the action and Marshal Burke follows her like a shadow.

“Everybody just _calm down_ ,” Sheriff Whitehorse pleads.

Joseph steps forward and parts the wall of angry men and women like Moses parted the Red Sea: his hands linger on the shoulders of his devoted just long enough to drain the tension from their wary bones. Each one slumps over at the middle in turn, like an army of freshly-turned zombies just waiting for the dinner bell.

For the first time Earl Whitehorse and Joseph Seed are in agreement over something – but Joseph makes it very clear that he’s the only one with total control.

“We knew this moment would come,” he assures. “We’ve prepared for it. _Go_.”

And one by one, the wary men and women of Joseph’s midnight congregation file out of the church.

Deputy Caine holds her breath as rough shoulders and elbows bump against her, knocking her left and right like a boat lost at sea. Nobody offers her more than a last vile look before the large white doors close with a hollow echo at her back – and then it’s over.

“I saw the Lamb open the first seal, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beast saying, ‘Come and see’—”

“Step forward,” Marshal Burke commands.

Joseph lowers his hands to his sides and takes a single, daring step in Marshal Burke’s direction. “And I _saw_ —” He turns his eyes to Sheriff Whitehorse. “—and behold, it was a _white horse_.”

The air within the church runs cold – freezing cold, cold enough to turn Deputy Caine’s breath into a white cloud of smoke on such an unseasonably warm September night – and she finds herself paralyzed with fear once Joseph turns those captivating blue eyes upon her.

Who _is_ Joseph Seed?

“And _Hell_ followed with him.”

Deputy Caine wonders in that moment how much of Joseph’s supposed ‘prophecy’ is just an illusion designed to trick the feeble and how much of it might actually conceal a working knowledge of something bigger.

She doesn’t have to wonder for long as Joseph once again raises his hands up before him as if to surrender to his arrest, and the rosary’s polished black beads dance in the waning candlelight in an involuntary hypnosis.

They never once break eye-contact.

“God will not let you take me.”

Joseph Seed invites her to take the plunge just as the serpent who did deceive Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Those petrifying eyes, right out of the confiscated video footage, demand that Deputy Caine search deep inside herself before she dare cast her judgement upon him.

She does not know what brought Joseph Seed to Hope County after a lifetime in Georgia or what it was that led him to found the Project at Eden’s Gate. She walked into his church tonight on the pretense of arresting the man when she didn’t even known the contents of the Project’s doctrine.

Everything that she presumes to know about Joseph Seed stems from a complaint filed with the Department of Justice over one viral video that was filmed _right here_.

Deputy Caine is just trying to do her job.

But once the news of his arrest breaks internationally, every eye in America will turn upon the sleepy Hope County.

Many people will applaud her on account of her achievement here, hailing her as a hero. She will become a symbol of the working class: proof that anything can be achieved with hard work and determination.

The fact that she is wearing a badge, however, will cast a long shadow over her past in a world that’s become so wary of the law. They will dig deeper into her background than is necessary, unearthing the life she had led prior to becoming the police officer who arrested the most dangerous known criminal in America on her first day.

When the world at large dissects them side by side, as caricatures of Good and Evil, how will she stand up against the enigma that is Joseph Seed?

Will America’s tainted public opinion of the law find some way to paint him as a martyr?

Can Roberta Caine say with complete conviction that she is _Good_?

Joseph’s eyes bore into her with such ferocious intensity that it feels as if he’s peering into her very soul and she’s convinced that he already knows _everything_ about her: she can see her every darkness reflected in those eyes.

Every part of Deputy Caine wants to turn and run because she swears she sees the Devil in Joseph’s eyes— 

“Rookie—”

Marshal Burke’s voice cuts through her hypnotic trance like a hot knife through butter.

The weight of the badge upon her breast reminds her that she took an oath to protect the people of Hope County. She’s done plenty of things in her life that she isn’t proud of, but she will always have less to fear on her judgement day than Joseph Seed as long as she makes the right choice tonight.

Deputy Caine takes a single step forward and slaps the handcuffs onto Joseph’s waiting wrists.

“ _Sometimes the best thing to do is to walk away_.”

 

Joseph Seed’s voice echoes in Roberta’s head like the thunder of an agitated subconscious.

With a start she recognizes that it’s _him_ she’s been running from the entire time, retreating further and further into the darkest recesses of her own mind because she’s not strong enough to awaken and face the truth. But a very real numbness remains in her extremities, semi-conscious and wholly sore.

It takes time for her eyes to adjust to the dim white light which spills in through a naked door frame at the far side of the room.

_Concrete_ , she determines, if the colour and the temperature of the solid ground beneath her are anything to go by.

Roberta believes herself to be underground.

Hope County is dotted with an alarming number of underground bomb shelters, most little more than relics of the Cold War era, and all built in response to the government’s decision to establish the Black Horse Peak Launch Complex within Holland Valley. She never much liked the thought of being underground, but the shock keeps the fear at bay while she tries to decipher the scope of her situation.

It isn’t until she tries to right herself that she discovers her hands have been bound by a thick plastic zip tie that’s been encircled snug around a thin metal bed frame. A single pull indicates that the frame is loose, but even if she managed to pry it free she would never be able to lug it out of here.

She’s not even certain she has the fight left in her to make that a reality.

Whoever had found her knew exactly what they were doing when it comes to taking a prisoner—

_Joseph Seed_ , Cameron’s voice echoes from within the dark. _I have a warrant issued for your arrest on the suspicion of kidnapping with the intent to harm_.

Instinct overpowers reason and Roberta begins to struggle illogically against the plastic bind that holds her into place. It’s a half-assed effort on account of her semi-conscious state, but the thought of being at Joseph’s mercy is enough to make her feel sick and, like an animal in a trap, adrenaline heats up within her veins like molten lava.

So lost in her fight is she that she doesn’t notice the figure standing in the door, watching over her fight in equal parts pity and bemusement.

Only once Roberta deems her efforts to be in vain does the figure speak: “Deputy.”

 

As soon as the white church doors open, the pungent smell of the compound attacks Deputy Caine’s senses and makes a bee line straight for her fragile stomach. It takes everything she has not to puke again, but she focuses all of her thoughts on the back of Joseph Seed’s head as she marches him out into the fog.

All she has to do is escort the man safely from the church doors to the awaiting helicopter and the worst of the night will be over.

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Men and women of the congregation howl and bark like dogs as Joseph is walked past them in handcuffs, _furious_.

Marshal Burke takes point this time around, leading the procession along a winding dirt road, while Sheriff Whitehorse and Deputy Hudson flank their prisoner. There’s simply no way four police officers could maintain the upper hand if a fight were to ensue, but they can’t let their worry show or everything will come crashing down.

Joseph remains perfectly still beneath Deputy Caine’s trembling hand, where the world GLUTTONY has been carved in between his shoulder blades, red and angry and raw.

The blocky letters look eerily similar to the verse carved into the church’s chipped white paint—

“Why are you so _afraid_ , Deputy?” Joseph asks over his shoulder.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Deputy Hudson intervenes sharply. “Anything you say can – and will – be used against you in a court of law.”

“Back up!” Marshal Burke commands in an effort to corral the Peggies in an orderly fashion, but it’s futile. “I am a Federal Marshal and I am ordering you to _stand back_.”

There are enough Peggies with enough firepower that they could kill the entire procession, but they don’t. That would be too _easy_. What happens instead is a single rock about the size of Deputy Caine’s fist, lobbed from the crowd, strikes Marshal Burke across the back of the head with enough force to leave him seeing stars.

_Red_ stars.

Sheriff Whitehorse draws at the first of a snarl in Marshal Burke’s impatient features in an effort to scare the abrasive Peggies into submission, but he doesn’t fire.

The confusion buys Deputy Caine and Deputy Hudson an opening to usher their prisoner ahead toward the helicopter before Marshal Burke can fire off one, two warning shots into the dark sky that echo like the hollow gong of a lonely church bell.

It takes the combined effort of Deputy Hudson, who climbs up into the helicopter for leverage, and Deputy Caine on the ground to actually get Joseph up into the helicopter’s cabin and fastened into his seat. Marshal Burke all but lifts Deputy Caine up into the helicopter with him as he goes, borrowing strength from a zap of adrenaline, like an electrical current.

Everything else is a blur.

“Get us the fuck out of here,” Marshal Burke hollers, but the Peggies set upon the helicopter like a horde of zombies and it becomes impossible to make a clean escape with all of the additional weight.

Devoted followers of Joseph Seed attach themselves to everything they can sink their grubby fingers into and each time one of them falls away, another one takes his place like it’s some kind of morbid, sacrificial ritual. The climb into the sky is a slow one, but if they don’t at least try, they won’t ever make it back to the Hope County Jail.

They can’t risk waiting any longer.

“Get ‘em off the windshield,” Sheriff Whitehorse commands of Deputy Pratt, but there’s nothing anyone can do as the man reaches up towards the helicopter’s rotor.

Marshal Burke elbows a woman out the open cabin door, but in those last moments she has a change of heart and clings onto the cuff of his pant leg, determined not to die. The unexpected change in weight nearly sends Marshal Burke toppling out of the helicopter for his lack of a seat belt, but Deputy Caine bars him in with one strong arm across his chest.

Had she been any smaller a woman, Marshal Burke’s weight alone would have sent them both tumbling to their death in the compound below.

His heart thunders in his chest, flush against Deputy Caine’s arm, and the devoid look in his eyes when he looks up into hers offers the first glimpse of fear he’s shown all night. This is his first _real_ brush with death in the line of duty.

He could have _died_ tonight.

_Everybody_ could have died tonight.

Deputy Caine truly believes that he’s in shock when he fires a shot into the Peggie to save himself.

The reverberation within the helicopter cabin nearly deafens the other passengers, but Joseph Seed remains comatose save for an old familiar hymn: “ _Amazing grace…_ ”

“Goddamn it, Burke—”

But it’s too late for reprimand now.

Deputy Caine helps Marshal Burke back into his seat and they amend their seat belt situation just in time for the man on the windshield to complete his climb up into the helicopter’s rotor. The fog outside the window becomes a temporary red mist.

The helicopter groans like an old ship before it begins its descent back down towards the compound.

It’s all anyone can do to say a little prayer before the inevitable crash.

“ _T’was blind, but now I see…_ ”


	3. Prologue

The smell of burning rubber and diesel fuel floods her nose, so pungent against the cackling sound of the fire that for a moment Deputy Roberta Caine is convinced that she’s died and gone to Hell.

But she awakens to discover that she is still belted into the helicopter seat, where she hangs opposite an out-of-town U.S. Marshal, Cameron Burke. The fit is so tight in the cabin that she may have been able to bridge the distance between them and check for a pulse had she not been rendered immobile by the poor circulation, indicative of the helicopter’s inverted state.

The realization that she cannot move comes with a wave of intense panic.

Everything feels numb.

Fire roars alongside the helicopter’s steel frame and the white heat dances across Deputy Caine’s freckled skin, cold and pallid, ushering in a sense of urgency.

In the seat to her immediate right is Deputy Joey Hudson, unconscious, if alive at all.

There is no sign of Joseph Seed.

_Are you there?_

Deputy Caine’s vision shifts in and out of focus.

It’s a voice – a woman’s voice – but it’s impossible to pinpoint the source.

 _Are you there?_ The voice comes again like the echo of an answerphone. _Are you there?_

As the world spins around her, a green plastic headset swims into focus, suspended from a thick coiled cord in the space where Joseph Seed had been. It’s the same headset that Sheriff Earl Whitehorse had used to contact Dispatch on the ride in—

The voice comes again, more clearly this time, desperate to be heard. “Are you there, Sheriff?”

It’s Nancy Blackburn.

Deputy Caine pulls up a hand that feels as useless to her as the rounded end of a baseball bat and paws after the plastic headset, determined, but the distance proves misleading. Has she suffered from a concussion in the helicopter crash?

“Deputy Hudson?” Nancy asks. “If you’re there, please pick up—”

It’s all Deputy Caine can do to keep trying for the headset.

Nancy is her only foreseeable chance of making it out of her current predicament alive, but her voice swings just outside of Deputy Caine’s limited reach, taunting her. The futility of the situation is not lost on her and, amid the smoke and fire, the frustration makes her eyes damp.

“Deputy Pratt? Deputy Caine?” Nancy’s voice comes again, louder now. “Are you there?”

 _I’m right here_ —

Deputy Caine reaches out her hand once again for the headset, but is instead caught mid-swing like a baseball by a second hand, dwarfing her in both size and strength.

The Rosary of the Seven Sorrows dangles down into her face.

“ _Amazing grace, how sweet the sound… that saved a wretch like me._ ”

Joseph Seed.

“Earl? Come in. Over.” Nancy’s voice cuts through the silence and two sets of vivid blue eyes turn toward the old headset. There’s a pause before she comes through again, this time more desperate. “Please. Are you there? Is somebody there?”

The words are momentarily forgotten as Joseph leans in towards Deputy Caine, so close that she can feel the warmth of his breath tickle her skin. “I told you God would not let you take me.”

“Please—” Nancy begs. “—I need to know what’s going on.”

It only occurs to Deputy Caine as Joseph reaches out to grab the green plastic headset that he is no longer bound by the handcuffs she had previously locked upon his wrists.

Joseph Seed is a free man.

And Deputy Caine is at his mercy.

He brings the headset radio to his face and says, “Dispatch?”

“Oh, God—”

“Everything is just fine here,” and there’s a _smile_. It’s a sight so repulsive that Deputy Caine has to close her eyes in an effort to make it disappear, but the sight lingers on the back of her eyelids and she doesn’t know which is worse: the reality or that he’s managed to invade her mind. “There’s no need to call anyone.”

“Yes, Father.” There’s a momentary pause. “Praise be to you.”

Deputy Caine tries to scream, but no voice comes.

Nancy Blackburn has been working Dispatch for the Hope County Sheriff’s Office since before Roberta Caine was born. Hearing her sweet voice say those words is like hearing her own grandmother call the Devil himself ‘ _Father_ ’.

The smell of freshly ground coffee brewing on a chilly autumn morning turns sour in Deputy Caine’s nostrils and the rhythmic click, click, click of the old-fashioned typewriter at the front desk becomes the rhythmic tick, tick, tick of the helicopter’s impending doom.

It’s unfamiliar and it’s petrifying.

It’s a _nightmare_.

Joseph never blinks once during the course of the exchange and, when he finally releases the headset back into suspension, he uses that very same hand to caress Deputy Caine’s cheek. “No one is coming to save you.”

The only thing she can do is watch as Joseph Seed – her _prisoner_ – climbs through the helicopter’s inverted cabin and into the awaiting arms of his devoted flock.

His hands find purchase on their arms, their shoulders, tangling into their hair as he takes the time to appreciate each man individually for his sacrifices to the Project. They embrace – all of them, together, in such a way that their foreheads touch intimately – before the men lift Joseph up onto the hood of an old, beat-up pickup truck as if he were weightless.

Joseph reaches his hands up into the air once more and the way that rosary dances in the firelight makes Deputy Caine nauseous.

“Everything is unfolding according to God’s plan,” he announces. “I am still here with you, but the first seal has been broken: the Collapse has begun and we will take what we need. We will preserve what we have. We will _kill_ all of those who stand in our way. These—” he gestures towards the helicopter. “—the Harbingers of Doom will see the _truth_.”

Deputy Caine hangs paralyzed – with fear, she suspects, though fear is not the only power at play tonight – as Joseph preaches to his congregation, which continues to grow as more Peggies are drawn to the light.

In the seat next to her Deputy Hudson begins to stir.

The first glimpse of the fire brings with it the first bout of irrational struggle and she writhes against the seat belt that keeps her locked in, as if completely ignorant of the plastic push lock that keeps the belt in place.

In the firelight outside Joseph turns his face up towards the sky and commands, “Begin the Reaping!”

Peggies set upon the helicopter like gremlins setting upon a village ripe for pillaging and then Deputy Hudson _fights_.

At first she bucks and she kicks at the countless hands that grope at her, but when it becomes apparent that there are too many to ward off, she turns her attention to that seat belt buckle. Even with her freedom, it’s futile: there are simply too many Peggies and Deputy Hudson cannot fight them all.

Deputy Caine reaches for Deputy Hudson amid the fray, but all she can manage is an ankle and she pulls with all of her might for fear of losing her friend.

“No,” her numb lips fumble. “Christ, Hudson—”

Deputy Hudson is forcibly ejected from the helicopter and Deputy Caine is left holding an empty boot for her effort, watching in hopelessness as Deputy Hudson is dragged from the wreckage, kicking and screaming. It only occurs to Deputy Caine then that this could be the last she ever sees of Joey—

Something in the back of the helicopter explodes then and the roar of the fire drowns out the echoes of Deputy Hudson’s choked sobs.

The surrounding forest erupts with flames, forcing the remaining Peggies away from the helicopter.

It inadvertently buys Deputy Caine a moment to compose herself.

“Let them burn!” Joseph hollers over the intense cackling, but he can no longer be seen through the wall of fire that engulfs the helicopter. “It is God’s will: this is their _punishment_.”

Deputy Caine discards Deputy Hudson’s boot in favour of the seat belt buckle.

It had been impossible to save Deputy Hudson, but if the Peggies don’t execute her immediately for her involvement in the arrest then there might still be a chance. Even if there isn’t, Deputy Caine resolves, she can’t allow what has happened here to be swept under the rug.

She _has_ to live.

The thought spurs an unnatural calm in her – something akin to shock, but self-induced – that she hasn’t felt since the helicopter took off from the Hope County Jail a lifetime ago.

Once her hands have stopped shaking it’s a cinch.

All at once she drops from her seat.

Deputy Caine lands roughly on her hands and knees on the cabin’s arched ceiling and the entire contraption sways, but she’s _free_. There’s no time to linger: the smell of burning rubber and diesel fuel floods her nose and the fire – there’s fire _everywhere_ – burns hot against her cold, pallid skin.

The fire rages on out of control and threatens to swallow up the remnants of the helicopter, and whatever else stands in its path if she doesn’t _run_.

A quick glance reveals that Marshal Burke is gone.

Everybody is gone.

Deputy Caine knows she too must escape before it’s too late and the fire consumes her. She crawls out of the helicopter wreckage on wobbly hands and knees and runs, blind, into the forest.

The intensity of the fire’s light casts dark shadows off the dense foliage that warp into long arms and reach for her ankles as she runs, arms pumping at her side as if she were running a sprint at the high school track meet. It’s all she can do to stay on her feet as the ground below her becomes rocky and uneven, threatening to trip her up.

Adrenaline is a powerful force, but Deputy Caine knows it’s only a matter of time before it breaks and she’s left to her own exhausted devices.

In the distance a small light – like a flickering candle – comes into view.

That, she decides, is her destination.

The light acts as a lighthouse to guide Deputy Caine into a safe port amid the thick blue-green fog. She advances slowly, keeping her head low, until not ten paces ahead stands a small wooden cabin. It’s not much to look at, but it’s _something_.

“I found him,” a man’s voice says suddenly, forcing her down into the moist earth behind a pile of rotten logs in an effort to remain undetected. “I found Matthew. It’s _bad_. They ambushed him. He’s _dead_ ,” the man pleads, but the sound of radio static indicates that he’s otherwise alone. “We need to find those sinners—”

Deputy Caine’s blood runs cold.

How far as the news of her escape spread?

How many people will be combing the forest in search of her?

Crouched down low, she maneuvers her way around the wood pile, ever mindful of where the cabin’s shadows fall, and she comes up on the Peggie from behind. Surprise is the only small favour that she’s been afforded without a gun: he doesn’t see her coming until it’s too late.

Deputy Caine leaps onto the man’s back and the surprise of her weight brings him to his knees, where she can effectively smash his forehead down into the rotting boardwalk with all of her strength.

There’s a loud _crack_ and the impact reverberates all the way up her arms and into her shoulders, going so far as to knock her teeth together.

It’s grisly, but the attack lasts less than a minute and the man never makes a peep.

Deputy Caine fishes the man’s gun out of his holster and checks the firearm’s ammunition before she turns her wary eyes upon the quiet logger’s cabin.

The inside is dark save for a single wobbly oil lantern that sits lit on a small makeshift table of wooden skid pallets. She moves gingerly as she circles the confined space, her back never leaving the wall, pressing back as if trying to become one with the shadows cast by the flickering light.

In her hand the gun is drawn, ready to fire, but kept low to avoid any potential mishaps.

A brief search of the cabin reveals that it hasn’t seen use in quiet some time.

Deputy Caine breathes a sigh of relief.

She holsters the gun and begins her search of the cabin’s contents. It crosses her mind to take the lantern with her for a more thorough inspection, but she needs to remain inconspicuous in the event that somebody else – a Peggie – happens upon it while she’s still inside. The last thing she needs is anyone getting the drop on _her_.

The lantern illuminates cans of homegrown tomato sauce and a rusty green pail from where it sits on the makeshift table.

Beside the pail is a worn-out wooden baseball bat with fading maker’s paint.

The bat Deputy Caine _does_ take.

It’s sturdy and the weight feels comfortable in her hand, even if she was never one for softball, making a far more ideal weapon than a gun in the event that she should run into anyone else. A single shot out here, tonight, would make her a beacon for every blood-thirsty Peggie in the area.

A baseball bat will also make encounters like the one outside feel a little less… personal.

At the thought, Deputy Caine steps back outside to evaluate the damage and discovers that a pool of blood has formed beneath the Peggie on the boardwalk.

She carefully picks her way over to the second corpse – Matthew – to discover that he has also been killed in an attack from behind. He was struck across the back of the head by a blunt object, most likely the nearby birch branch, and the force of the blow has caved his skull inwards.

Deputy Caine’s forensics are limited, but she knows by the extent of the damage that whoever set upon Matthew was _strong_.

It’s the exact type of confrontation she hopes to avoid tonight.

From her position kneeling on the boardwalk she can see a second light source through the foggy forest. The intensity of it is much stronger than the cabin’s light, but it sits much lower to the ground and she deduces it must be a campfire.

At this distance it’s impossible to tell if it’s a Peggie camp or not, but it would be wise to assume that there are Peggies lying in wait _everywhere_ beyond the scope of her visibility.

An optimistic outcome seems highly unlikely.

Deputy Caine swallows thickly before retreating back into the cabin’s front for one final sweep before she disappears out into the dark forest. She keeps low and moves quickly, the weight of the baseball bat in her hand providing the only comfort she can lean on as she follows a small brook down the steep, stony slope.

The campfire’s light reveals a misty silhouette of what appears to be a hunting blind that stands a safe distance out of sight. It will provide her an advantage on whoever might occupy the fire, so she has to try for it.

Vulgar threats echo on the quiet night air, but it’s impossible to tell where they’re coming from or how close they might be.

Deputy Caine scales the ladder of the hunting blind as quiet as a mouse.

If there’s a Peggie stationed as a lookout at the top, she doesn’t intend to give him or her any indication of her arrival.

But the coast is clear.

There’s a handful of ammunition and a pair of binoculars on a small table, which Deputy Caine pockets before she scopes out the campfire: the silhouettes of two Peggies are visible through the binocular lens. Their backs are turned towards her as they engage in dialogue. She’s too far away to hear what they’re saying, but they’re definitely animated.

It’s a tempting shot at such a close range, especially given how unguarded they are, but Deputy Caine knows better than to try for it.

She’s no sharpshooter.

Movement catches her attention further up the trail and she swivels the binoculars to reveal two more Peggies traipsing through the forest, only visible for the white of their clothes.

There’s no time to question their presence, though, because the radio on her hip crackles to life.

Deputy Caine’s heart leaps into her throat and she nearly drops the binoculars.

“ _Hello…? Anyone hearing me? Hello? It’s Burke. Hello?_ ”


	4. Prologue

There's a certain appeal to dive bars that keeps Roberta Caine coming back like a moth to a flame.  
  
The people are different and the music is a little too much rock and not enough country for her taste once she's in the city, but the atmosphere is the same. The lights are dim and the air is hot - muggy, even, for September - and it's so crowded that nobody sees her come in.  
  
That's precisely why it's here that she has planned a rendezvous with a man that she's expected to fly back to Hope County with in a little bit less than twelve hours.  
  
He was introduced to her over the phone as a federal marshal who was being sent in to accompany Hope County's law enforcement team and effectively wrangle Earl Whitehorse's authority right out from under his nose on the day of Montana's biggest arrest on record, from what Roberta understood.  
  
But she hasn't wasted two years of her life at a community college just to roll over and become some pretentious fed's lapdog.  
  
Roberta is loyal to Earl before anyone else.  
  
It's a beer and a half into the night before a heavy hand lands on her shoulder and spins her around on her bar stool. That's the first time Roberta ever lays eyes on Cameron Burke: a kind of leering smile hangs from his crooked lips, lopsided, the way one might hang a picture.  
  
"Have I kept you waiting long?" Are the first words out of his mouth, and he knows damn well that he has. It wasn't an accident.  
  
"Not at all," Roberta lies, cool as a cucumber. "I'm already one ahead of you, so the first one's on me."  
  
As if to sweeten the pot she even flags down the bartender.  
  
The man working the bar that night is a scrawny kid no older than twenty - a part-timer, she's certain - and he's only on the job to supplement an education: he's smiley by force of habit, but he's not particularly friendly.  
  
"What kind of gentleman would I be if I let a lady buy my drinks?" Cameron asks, but he doesn't speak with the air of a gentleman. "Lighten up, Rookie. I ain't asking you to call me 'boss' tomorrow, just to do as I say. The target is _dangerous_."  
  
Roberta laughs at the last part and slaps some change down onto the bar to cover the next order.  
  
Cameron sounds far from frightened by the prospect himself. He's simply goading Roberta on by treating her like a scared little girl because he couldn't be bothered to read anything past the 'Junior' in Junior Deputy in her file.  
  
She decides then that he speaks with the air of a pompous asshole who has too much green burning a hole in his pocket.  
  
"Listen to yourself," Roberta says and she returns to her drink. "You don't even—"  
  
"I _have_ been to Hope County, if that's what you're thinking."  
  
And Roberta shuts up right quick because that is _exactly_ what she's been thinking and it catches her between a rock and a hard place.  
  
Her first opinion of the man was that he was nothing but a no-good city slicker looking to piggyback off of Hope County's moment of fame: news of Joseph Seed's arrest will make front-page headlines across the country, but the presence of a federal marshal will tarnish the pride of the local law enforcement.  
  
Cameron's expression is blank as he studies her expression, but his eyes are triumphant. "Spent a lot of summers down that way fly fishing with my uncle, the governor of Montana State."  
  
Roberta wants to roll her eyes, but she doesn't. "How quaint."  
  
He isn't particularly enthusiastic about being met with sarcasm, but she isn't particularly enthusiastic about his attempt to lord his nepotism over her.  
  
Law in Hope County is about far more than just wearing a badge and this out-of-town joker thinks to make a mockery of it. It sets Roberta's blood to a boil.  
  
"Chin up," he says and he tilts her chin up with a strong finger and thumb. "It's just an arrest, Caine: Joseph Seed will enter federal custody before sunset and Hope County will return to its sleepy state as if it were all a bad dream."  
  
"It ain't Joseph Seed that I'm wary of, Marshal."  
  
But Cameron already knows that and her saying so only earns her a hearty laugh in return.  
  
Like it isn't enough to be designated the 'Rookie' when she has ten years at the Hope County Sheriff's Department under her belt - which is more than Deputy Staci Pratt, who pinned her with 'Rookie' in the first place - she is now being stripped of her pride as a deputy sheriff before she even enters the job by being forced down another rung on the ladder.  
  
Cameron clasps a heavy hand onto her shoulder that startles her right out of her self-doubt. "First-time jitters, Rookie. It gets easier with time."  
  
"Roberta," she offers at last, as if a first-name basis will create some sort of a peace treaty. It sure beats 'Rookie'. "Folks back in Hope County call me Robbie Lee."  
  
"Your family from the south, Robbie Lee?" The attempt at an accent is droll.  
  
"Mississippi."  
  
The bartender arrives and places a cheap beer down on the counter between them and Cameron wastes no time bringing the bottle to his parched lips. " _Fuck_ ," he grimaces. "Tastes like piss—"  
  
It's Roberta's turn to laugh as she takes a sip from her own bottle, warm and flat. "You get used to it."  
  
  
After another couple of drinks they toasted to Roberta's graduation and subsequent promotion (it takes legal impairment to convince Cameron to swap 'Rookie' for 'Deputy') before they retire for the night into a cheap motel room.  
  
It's a wonder either of them make it to the room without a tumble.  
  
Cameron kicks off his shoes at the door as Roberta falls back into the bed with a content sigh. The mattress may be stiff with age, but the springs definitely aren't broken.  
  
The gentle bounce of the springs ignites a pleasant warmth within her belly that leaves her smiling up at the bulbous ceiling lights and she could have fallen asleep right there, lying sideways across the bed with her legs dangling to the floor, but Cameron offsets her balance by taking a heavy seat next to her.  
  
"Are you going to miss living in the city?"  
  
It would be a lie to say that two years of boarding in Missoula hadn't given the city time to grow on her: for the past two years Roberta's lived right next door to a one-stop department store that offers every available necessity in one convenient location. It will take her an entire day to make all of the necessary stops back home, but there's also a career as a deputy sheriff that's been twelve years in the making awaiting her at the Hope County Sheriff's Department - and she wouldn't trade that for all of the conveniences in the world.  
  
After spending thirty years of her life in Holland Valley, nowhere else in the world could ever feel quite as much like home.  
  
"Sure," she says agreeably. "But my home will always be in Hope County."  
  
Roberta stretches her arms back above her head and yawns.  
  
Cameron tells himself that it's the alcohol that draws his eyes to the smattering of freckles that dot the tanned skin of Roberta's trim stomach, yearning for the caress of his hand. It's _definitely_ the alcohol that allows those thoughts to spill over into actions.  
  
He doesn't even notice his wandering hand until Roberta laughs and the sound does nothing for Cameron's self-restraint.  
  
"What are you doing?" She asks, playful, as her hand roves over the exposed skin until it finds his. That's when she's faced with inconvenient truth: "You're wearing a wedding band, Marshal."  
  
Cameron places his lips to the hard expanse of her stomach that set a cage of butterflies loose in Roberta's stomach.  
  
"You get used to it."  
  
The alcohol makes it all too easy for Roberta to lose herself in the warmth of Cameron's large hands as they explore every curve. His breath tickles her skin, soft like a down feather, but it's the warmth of his lips that sets her on fire.  
  
Being in a strange place with a perfect stranger allows her mind to conjure up a world of pretend where a one night stand will remain just that: come morning, they will be strangers again.  
  
But there's a small part of Roberta that knows she's making a grave mistake by allowing herself to become intimate with Cameron Burke tonight - and it has nothing to do with the wedding band he's left on the bedside table.  
  
In less than twenty-four hours they will never see one another again.  
  
Roberta is no stranger to casual sex: it became her go-to comfort food in the face of great anxiety and it had never let her down in the past. That's how she knows that it isn't Cameron who is causing the unrest in the pit of her stomach, but _her_.  
  
Casual sex has always been an alternative to something in Roberta's life, but tonight there's nothing to escape - except the penetrating stare of Joseph Seed that she'd told herself was of no concern.  
  
  
"C'mon," Cameron growls in the afterglow of the first orgasm, but the sound comes out slurred on account of the alcohol. "Forget about the dumb clichés and get over here. Bed's fuckin' cold without you."  
  
"You say _I'm_ cliché—"  
  
Roberta fishes a cigarette and her father's old Zippo lighter from the pocket of her discarded jeans before she joins him back on the bed to light up a smoke. She's barely got it burning before Cameron snakes an arm around her naked middle and eases her down across his stomach.  
  
After a long moment of silence in which Roberta enjoys her cigarette, he runs his large fingers messily through her hair, eyes chasing the strands that tumble across her forehead and bare shoulder.  
  
"This is awful cozy," she jokes around the butt, seeking out his eyes amid the shadows of the room. "You know, we've got the whole night ahead of us to have our fun before we have to start worrying 'bout tomorrow."  
  
"I'm jealous of you, Rookie," he says almost wistfully. Roberta's too caught up in a trail of smoke rings to clock him for it and Cameron decides that she must have been smoking nearly all of her life. "You'll be getting out of this place for good, once all of this is over."  
  
"Maybe we should switch places—"  
  
"Easy there, sweetheart." Cameron laughs as if it's particularly funny. "Wouldn't wish my wife on _anybody_."  
  
Roberta jabs an elbow roughly into his side for the remark before she offers him the cigarette. "No sense in talking 'bout her tonight."  
  
"I'm leaving her," Cameron assures, as if that makes a lick of difference to Roberta's sobering conscious. "When all of this is over, I'm getting the fuck out of Missoula and I'm starting over."  
  
"Surely the two of you can live in the same city—"  
  
"It's not just _her_ , Roberta," he counters, forceful. Defensive. "Grew up in this shithole, for Christ's sake, and it's only ever chewed up my dreams and spit them back in my face. I want to go anywhere that isn't _here_ \- fuck the rest."  
  
It's on the tip of her tongue to crack wise about his uncle, _the governor_ , but she can feel every skip of his thundering heart.  
  
It isn't post-coital adrenaline - it's _fear_.  
  
"I was 'bout five, my dad and I used to throw a ball around," he begins. "Lived in a gated suburb. You were probably learning how to shoot a gun at that age, but I learned how to catch a ball. Hadn't even touched a gun 'til I entered the academy - hadn't done much 'til I entered the academy, really. Put all of my time into sports to appease my old man."  
  
Roberta lets Cameron keep the cigarette as he speaks.  
  
It sounds like he needs it.  
  
And as arrogantly presumptuous as Cameron might be, he isn't wrong about her past: Roberta had been about five years old the first time her father put a gun in her hand and she had never felt one way or the other about his decision.  
  
That was just the way things were done in Hope County.  
  
Roberta had shot at empty bottles on fence posts until she was eight. Her big brother, Albert Caine, had been the one to take her on her very first hunting trip up into the Whitetail Mountains and between the two of them they never saw a single deer.  
  
That was very first time in her life that anyone had sat her down to talk about the importance of respecting not only the game which she intended to shoot, but also the gravity of each bullet.  
  
_A gun is not a toy, Robbie Lee_.  
  
It wasn't until Roberta turned thirteen that she learned Albert had taken her on that trip to escape the heat of non-fatally shooting his best friend: they had been playing with a loaded gun and that guilt had never completely left him.  
  
And the look of desperation in Albert's eyes when he pleaded with her - _a gun is not a toy, Robbie Lee_ \- had never completely left her.  
  
It had inadvertently become their little 'secret' - but it ruined the closeness they once shared.  
  
"My old man was the quarterback of his high school football team - and he would have done real well, had he gone off to college. But he abandoned football to be with my mother when he learned about _me_ ," Cameron laments as if it were _his_ football career that had been stunted. "He always wanted me to succeed in life where he had failed, but I didn't even make the team."  
  
Roberta reaches for the cigarette then and Cameron lets her take it, watching as she nests the filter between her lips. Despite being so close, her eyes are a million miles away.  
  
Cameron wonders if her mind is back in Hope County right now, relieving her own regrets through a microscopic lens of scrutiny.  
  
If a firecracker like Roberta Caine even _has_ regrets.  
  
"Don't be so hard on yourself," she says finally, anticlimactic. "Took me ten years to get myself to school, just to get some stupid piece of tin. Life ain't supposed to be easy, Cameron, no matter who you know. Shit, think about it: if you'd become a football star like your dad wanted, I would have wound up celebrating alone tonight."  
  
A chuckle escapes from Cameron at the vulgar implication of her words, the vibration of which reignites that fire in Roberta's belly.  
  
It isn't that Cameron wants his life to be _easy_ , he thinks, but that he wants it to be his own.  
  
Football had never been his passion - no more than being a police officer or being a husband - but he has always believed that he would one day live vicariously through the happiness of others.  
  
It's taken him three full lifetimes to discover that he will never be satisfied living somebody else's dream at the sacrifice of his own - and by now he's spent so long trying to be someone else that he no longer knows how to be himself.  
  
Who is Cameron Burke beneath the lies?  
  
Even if the years and experience under his belt as a police officer qualify him for his U.S. Marshal's badge on paper, he never would have passed a test of character without the influence of his uncle. His entire life - including his marriage - has been built upon nepotism because at fifteen years old he couldn't catch a fucking _ball_.  
  
Cameron chances a look down at Roberta then, a tangle of bare limbs and sex-stained motel room sheets, lost in a swirl of cigarette smoke.  
  
Looking into her blue eyes is like looking down at the earth from outer space: everything feels so small and insignificant and in that moment he sees everything that he never thought he _could_ be reflected back at him.  
  
It's taken Roberta _ten years_ to achieve her dream.  
  
People of Cameron's ilk would have written those years off as a  _waste_ because she was idle and not _doing_ , but those ten years had been the most productive years of Roberta's life because they rewarded her with something more valuable than financial or social status: the reward was an established sense of self.  
  
In Roberta's neck of the woods it's enough to just _survive_ , but with each passing day of survival comes a growing desire to _live_.  
  
That's exactly what Roberta is doing, indulging Cameron in his extramarital affair.  
  
Roberta Caine is living while Cameron Burke is merely existing.  
  
"Put that damn cigarette out," he commands and he leans in to kiss Roberta's smoky mouth. "We're just getting started, Rookie."  
  
  
Dawn comes early over Missoula and the first traces of sunlight peek through the musty motel room curtains, forcing a groan from the hungover U.S. Marshal. Cameron rolls onto his back on the rock-hard mattress, his body stiff, and it takes a moment for the previous night's misadventures to catch up.  
  
It returns in pieces: Roberta Caine had invited him out under the guise of an icebreaker, but no small-town law enforcement appreciates being encroached upon by a federal agency.  
  
He had respected that she had the gall to call him on it so politely.  
  
Not that he could do a thing about it: orders are orders.  
  
It took approximately two minutes for Cameron to decide that Roberta was operating independent of Sheriff Earl Whitehorse and the Hope County Sheriff's Department, so he indulged her. To his surprise she had loosened up considerably once she got a few drinks in her, so he had given himself permission to unwind, as well.  
  
A dark blob on the side table catches his attention before it skitters out of sight.  
  
Cameron reaches out a hand and blindly gropes for his companion, but discovers Roberta's side of the bed to be empty.  
  
The mussed sheets he finds in her place are still warm and they smell distinctly of a woman's shampoo.  
  
It's distinctly _not_ his wife's shampoo.  
  
It takes all of his strength to pull himself upright and do a full once-around the room, but it's nothing to marvel at - a regular roach motel.  
  
The bathroom door swings open with a creak and Roberta appears, fully clothed aside from the final buttons that she's fingering through her top. She doesn't even lift her head to announce begrudgingly, "We're going to be late if you don't get moving."  
  
"I don't _want_ to leave," Cameron groans, massaging his temple. "Go get that shower running. I'm going to call in a delay on the helicopter - I'm not done with you yet."  
  
The rest of the world can wait, he decides.  
  
Cameron's got thirty years of _living_ to catch up on and in that moment Roberta Caine is what  _he_ wants.


	5. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay on getting this one out - it didn't go through as much vetting as the previous chapters, so it's probably going to appear less polished.
> 
> I've got a rough idea of how the final two prologue chapters are going to play out, but with a new interim position eating up most of my time and energy I've been having a hard time getting my ducks in a row. At this point I will consider this project a success if I can squeeze out those last two chapters and at least have a complete prologue.
> 
> Fingers crossed.

In the distance a second light shines – a whiter, brighter light that feels artificial in contrast to the warm orange of the firelight.

It’s electric lighting.

 

 _I see a… a trailer nearby, it’s next to a long bridge. I’m gonna try and get inside_.

 

The light flickers only a short hike up a steep hill from the hunting blind and if there’s a chance that it’s a trailer standing next to a long bridge, Roberta knows she has to chance it.

The forest is damp with the thick fog that blankets it and every leaf that brushes against her skin leaves behind a cold, wet imprint, like the sticky residue of a spider’s web. It’s difficult to see and she’s left groping, blind, for footholds in the loose earth.

 

_If anyone’s still alive out there… listen, if anyone’s still alive—_

“Marshal Burke?” Roberta whispered into the radio, only to be met with silence. “It’s Deputy Caine. Come in.”

For a long time she had sat up in that hunting blind, alone and afraid, staring intently at the cheap piece of plastic that would never buzz to life again.

 

The stone cliff face is rough and sharp and it bites into her skin without remorse.

It’s a steep climb to make on a gamble, but Roberta manages it as quietly as possible to ensure that she isn’t detected by the men standing idle by the campfire below. By now it’s not even a conscious thought. It’s the animalistic drive of self-preservation that keeps her going.

At the top she finds exactly what she’s looking for: a trailer house. Beyond it, illuminated by the dim blue-green glow of the moon, a length of fence stands as the only obstacle between her and a paved road.

An escape.

 _Freedom_ —

If she can reach that road, all she would need is one passing vehicle, a barfly or a graveyard shift worker, and she would be out of the woods.

But in this moment she needs to focus on the trailer that stands in front of her – on finding Cameron Burke – because she knows she isn’t going to make it out of Hope County on her own tonight.

She’s little more than a rat in Joseph Seed’s maze.

Roberta stays low and uses the assortment of wood piles as cover as she makes her approach, one creeping step forward at a time.

There’s only one silhouette of note against the bright white light. A round man, bald, who moves with a lurch in his step as if he’s been drinking. He stops every time he threatens to step foot outside of the light, waits, and then paces back in the opposite direction. His beard is long and unkempt, but that’s hardly the worst part. When he moves just right, a large gun – a rifle, perhaps – winks at Roberta through the fog.

The forest is quiet except for the pattering of his large boots in the damp earth.

If she moves quickly, she can get the jump on him the same as she did the man on the boardwalk, but this man is much larger and it’s unlikely that the element of surprise would allow her to overpower him. Even the aluminum baseball bat in her hands is no match for this one.

Roberta disappears back into the dark forest with the fluidity of a shadow and skirts around the site once before concluding that this is not the trailer reported in Cameron’s radio call.

She wastes little time in making herself scarce.

It’s a quick climb down the opposite escarpment from where she came and, with how unstable the rocks are beneath her feet, it’s a wonder she doesn’t hurt herself on the way down.

The fence, however, is where her luck runs out. There’s no way she can climb it with the large coils of barbed wire strung along the top and it extends in both directions indefinitely. It towers over her, black and menacing, the last obstacle that stands between her and the world outside of Hope County—

“On the ground – now!”

Roberta does as she’s told and she drops to her knees, the aluminum baseball bat landing with a cold thud in the damp earth.

“All right, all right! Please, don’t hurt me—”

A second voice, a voice that’s not Roberta’s, pleads for mercy.

It takes a moment for the implications of those words to fully sink in, but as soon as they do Roberta’s head comes up like a gopher.

The silhouette of a car – idle – looms in the fog and two figures move like shadows acting out a tableau in the headlights. It’s hard to make it out clearly: one figure appears to be kneeling while the other circles in on him like a hungry wolf.

“Where is she?” The man, a Peggie, demands as he waves a large gun – likely a shotgun. His victim shrinks away from the sound of his voice as if he’s been struck.

“Who?” He begs, exasperated. “Please, you have to believe me: I haven’t seen anyone all night—”

The man is struck over the head and the blow stuns him into silence.

“Useless.”

It’s Roberta Caine’s first night on the job and she already finds herself caught in the crux of her career: she’s a police officer and she’s sworn to protect the people of Hope County. _This_ , the courage to put a stop to such blatant abuse, is exactly what her badge stands for – and yet, when faced with the opportunity for action, she finds herself paralyzed.

But it’s not fear she realises with a growing sense of self-loathing.

It’s _self-preservation_.

When faced with a man in immediate distress she still has the gall to debate whose life is more valuable, like there’s even a choice to be made, but there isn’t. The moment Earl Whitehorse pinned that badge upon her breast was the moment choice became duty.

With trembling hands, Roberta frees her gun from the holster at her hip.

She trains her sight on what she perceives to be the broad chest of the offending Peggie and squeezes the trigger. The shot is loud and the burst of light that accompanies it is blinding, but somewhere amid it all she manages to holler, “Run!”

The Peggie’s victim wastes no time scampering back into his car and he takes off into the night, the red twinkle of taillights fading into the fog.

There’s no time to linger on her abandonment before she’s forced to take her own advice.

Roberta _runs_.

 

From the shower to the bed, naked and wet, tangled in each other’s arms, it’s a wonder neither of them slip and break their neck.

Roberta’s knees buckle against the side of the bed and down they go, the only barrier between herself and Cameron being the hand that breaks his fall. For a moment they say nothing at all, only laugh in the post-catastrophic bliss.

“You _sure_ we got time?” she breathes, a hot whisper against the stubble of his unshaven face.

“Positive,” he assures and he runs his large fingers through her thick, wet hair.

Using his position as the state governor’s nephew to play hookie leaves Roberta with an uneasy feeling in her gut: she’s just a small town sheriff’s deputy who doesn’t even have her badge yet. She joined the force with honest intentions, but the feeling of his fingers laced through her hair makes her feel so _good_.

There’s something particularly alluring about the fact that the man who’s now hovering over her, ravishing her with his eyes, has the power to make such demands with a single phone call.

For one day he’s stopped the entire world just for _her_.

It feels wonderfully important.

Maddening, even.

“Does he _know_?” she whispers, only to be met with a look of blatant confusion. “Your uncle, Cameron. Jesus.”

“Nah,” he says casually, as if to disarm her concern. “I fed him some bullshit about food poisoning; my insides are so fucked up that I’ll need at least a couple more hours before I can even _think_ about boarding a helicopter.

“Gross,” she teases. “What the fuck did you eat last night?”

“ _You_.”

The mischievous twinkle in his eyes is exactly what Roberta enjoys so much about Cameron Burke.

On the eve of what could very well play out to be the biggest arrest of their entire lives he agreed to indulge her in a drink. One thing had led to another on account of the alcohol that effectively suppressed an array of fears that neither of them had known they were harboring, but that Cameron was so quick to play hookie on a federal arrest in favour of humping like teenagers is just Roberta’s kind of reckless.

This time, however, they don’t fuck.

They instead make love on top of the dirty motel room sheets in the soft glow of the morning sun and the warmth of Cameron all around her casts Hope County and Earl Whitehorse into the back of Roberta’s mind like long, winding shadows.

Cameron’s eyes flutter shut in bliss.

In this moment there is no Joseph Seed.

In this moment there is no pain and no suffering.

In this moment there is only two lonely and imperfect people chasing nirvana – and it’s in this moment that Robert wants to remain forever.

 

 _Run_.

Roberta’s brain registers the urgency, but her body is hard-pressed to listen.

She’s been functioning on autopilot since the helicopter crash – no breaks, no time to breathe. Her limbs are cold and numb in spite of the unseasonable September heat that makes the air so thick.

 _Run_.

Roberta’s brain registers the urgency, but she can’t move any faster in this minefield of small rocks and stumps that threaten to trip her up.

Her hands and her knees are already bruised black from all of the missed opportunities to catch herself before she hit the ground; it’s a wonder that she’s even able to push forward after all the needless falls she’s taken since she fired that one shot.

 _Run_.

Roberta’s brain registers the urgency, but the shadows of cold, dead hands grab at her ankles and send her tumbling down into the moist earth. Joey Hudson’s hands. Earl Whitehorse’s hands. Staci Pratt’s hands.

They’re jealous hands, hands that want to see her fail in the same way that they themselves have failed, because it’s not fair that she gets the chance to run – to _live_ – when they had to fall.

 _Run_.

Roberta’s brain registers the urgency, but she no longer wants to run.

Her legs wobble and shake beneath her weight and she tumbles again, down into the dirt, and this time she doesn’t get up. She lies in the damp earth and breathes in the fresh green foliage, the tangy smell of gunpowder and the ripe stench of sweat.

There is no deodorant in the world strong enough to mask the smell of helicopter fuel and a lifetime of perspiration.

It smells like defeat.

 _Roberta_ , a voice calls from within the dark. _Roberta, wake up. We’ve got to go_.

“No,” she grumbles into the soil as if it were a pillow.

 _I know, I know_ , the voice says with a trace of laughter and she swears she’s had this conversation before. _I don’t want to leave – ever – but the world is waiting_.

When Roberta finally finds the strength to lift her head she sees a trailer house, partially obscured by large piles of wood, and the ground is laden with sawdust. For a moment her heart stops: has she managed to run herself in one big circle, chasing her own tail?

She climbs to her feet against her body’s complaint in order to scout the perimeter and that’s when she sees it – a long rope bridge on the west side of the property that connects the bluffs.

If Cameron is still alive, he will have found a way inside by now.

Roberta takes both wooden steps in one stride and knocks heavily on the back door.

There’s no response, but the door is already open – all evidence points to a break-in – and the door glides effortlessly into the darkness of the trailer house, the steel frame yawning like a mouth just waiting to swallow her whole.

Not a soul stirs to indicate that there’s anyone around, so Roberta shoulders her way inside in haste.

“C—”

Two large hands close around her throat and slam her back into the wall, all before the back door as time to close.

Only a strangled cry escapes her lips before they become numb, swelling, a violet shade of blue. In blind fear for her life Roberta fights back against her attacker: she thrashes violently in an effort to wrestle herself free from his vice-like grip and she kicks out like a stubborn mule, determined not to let this be her end.

The man bearing down on her is much bigger – and much stronger – than she is, though, and his large fingers press bruises deep into the tender skin of her neck.

As her vision begins to funnel, her fight weakens.

In her last moments of consciousness Roberta thinks about the lifeless body of Matthew—

The realization seems to strike in tandem because she’s released all at once, falling to the floor in a fit of coughs and sputters as she tries to remember how to breathe. Her lungs feel as if they’ve been set aflame from deep within her chest and tears sting in her eyes.

“Roberta—?”

Cameron sounds just as surprised by the turn of events as Roberta feels.

He wastes no time pulling her to her feet, but she doesn’t even have time to fit a word in before she’s swallowed up into an embrace that threatens to squeeze the life out of her.

Roberta snakes her arms up and around his large back in her lightheaded daze before she leans fully into him like a puppet whose strings have been cut, but it’s the ferocity of his embrace that frightens her the most.

When she closes her eyes there is nothing except the warmth of his arms holding her, _safe_.

 _Missoula_ —

But they’re at least two and a half hours out from Missoula now and there isn’t an active phone line in the entire county. As it stands they run the very real risk of being eaten alive by the forest outside – and not even Cameron’s uncle, the governor, will find their bodies out here.

If the dark forest doesn’t do them in before the dawn breaks, the Peggies, hungry for blood, most certainly will.

“C’mon,” Cameron says and he untucks her from within his arms with the same delicacy one might use to untuck a letter from its envelope. “You came in right behind me; I haven’t had a chance to secure the perimeter.”

The trailer house is cozy: there’s a small bedroom on the right of the entrance and the rest of the trailer is on the left.

The bedroom is sparse.

A flat, filthy cot lacking blankets and pillows sits in the corner of the room, barren and brass and uninviting. A single burning candle flickers within a deep glass jar on a cluttered vanity to illuminate faded pictures of Joseph Seed and his family, hung like Playboy centerfolds, blanched white from years of sun exposure.

Leaning in for a closer look Roberta determines that Joseph has Charles Manson’s eyes, equal parts enrapturing and terrifying, even through a glass pane.

Those eyes follow her around the room as she pokes through boxes of old junk, watching, _judging_.

Roberta trips over her own feet backtracking the three steps it takes to return to the living room and the noise of her struggle catches Cameron off-guard. He glances up from where he’s been staring into a large framed portrait of the Seed family in his hands and she swears she sees unadulterated fear in his eyes.

“I had no idea. _Fuck_. We’re putting this whole family away. All of ‘em,” he confesses, breathless, and as if to punctuate his momentary relapse into fear with an affirmation of courage, he tosses the portrait down onto the nearby table. “Fucking lunatics—”

The glass cracks, but remains largely intact within its frame.

No matter where she goes, she realises, Roberta cannot escape Joseph’s eye.

In an effort to look anywhere but into that portrait, she finds herself drawn to a crude carving in the faux-wood wall paneling. Words – scripture – etched in large, blocky lettering identical to the hand that carved Revelation 1:8 into the chipped white paint of the church door.

 _Then the priest shall give orders to take two live clean birds_ —

“I don’t like this,” Roberta rasps as if she’s been smoking all of her life and the adverse side effects have only just caught up to her. She wears those large red hand prints like a ruby necklace.

Cameron reaches for her and their hands find each other in the dark.

All of the tremors ebb away into the warmth of his touch.

“It’s okay,” he says in a loud whisper and the smile that touches his lips – the kind of smile that comes over an enlightened man – leaves no room for argument. “ _We’re_ okay, Roberta, as long as we stick together.”

 _Together_ —

In that moment the cold, dark trailer house fades away into the warm glow of a motel room.

It doesn’t even matter to Roberta in that moment _which_ motel room.

“We’re gonna get out of this,” Cameron continues. “It’s probably only a few hours back to Missoula, and then we’re gonna come back here with the goddamn National Guard—”

The motel room shifts before her eyes like desert sand to open up an oasis and Roberta finds herself standing in reception at the Hope County Sheriff’s Office. It starts just like any other morning: the smell of freshly ground coffee brewing and the rhythmic click, click, click of the typewriter.

From behind the desk Nancy Blackburn smiles up at her with kindly old eyes. “Praise be to you.”

Roberta feels sick to her stomach.

It becomes more and more difficult to imagine that there’s any hope for them since the helicopter crash. In a matter of minutes the entire world seemed to end, and the night has since been strung together like one long nightmare that she can’t seem to awaken from.

She wonders if there’s even still a world outside of Hope County.

Cameron Burke – and the large hand that’s holding onto hers – is the only thing she knows is real.

 _No one is coming to save you_.

But Joseph is wrong.

He has to be.

With a tentative squeeze of Cameron’s hand, Roberta says, “Where you go, I go.”

And in that moment Cameron realises he _needs_ Roberta.

He doesn’t just need her right now to hold his hand and make him feel like a big man for chasing her fears away, until he can return home to his doting wife and lovely estate in Missoula. He needs to wake up to the sight of her naked in his bed each morning – even if that bed is a poor man’s bed – and he needs to fall asleep to the comfortable weight of her in his arms each night.

He needs her _always_ because with Roberta Caine by his side Cameron Burke knows exactly who he’s supposed to be.

He tilts her face upward with his thumb and forefinger, and he places a chaste kiss on her lips—there’s no warning before a large rock shatters a nearby window and all Hell breaks loose.


	6. Prologue

Cameron Burke responds to the sound of shattering glass reflexively by putting a hole clean in the next window with that 9mm he’s so damn proud of, and the subsequent echo of the shot on the quiet night shocks Roberta like a bolt of lightning.

Shouting from outside of the trailer is coupled with retaliatory gunfire and it all melts into one monotonous drumming, like the sound of rain on a windowpane.

Roberta frees the gun on her hip as she scrambles into cover behind one of the broken windows.

Outside the silhouettes of Peggies shamble like zombies in the fog.

_Pop! Pop!_

One of the men, whose bald head shines to give away his position behind a large woodpile near the back of the lumberyard, drops like a sack of potatoes with two rounds clean in his chest.

It takes three more rounds – _Pop! Pop! Pop!_ – to put down a second man eager to check on his friend.

A rain of return fire pelts the steel siding of the trailer house and forces Roberta back into cover beneath the windowsill, where she fingers the release and the spent magazine drops haphazardly into her lap. No matter how she tries to steel her nerves for another volley of return fire, the macabre tableau of death outside dances across the back of her eyelids.

 _A gun is not a toy, Robbie Lee_.

Albert Caine’s voice echoes like a conscience in the back of her mind.

A sudden and rough shake sends the full magazine in her hand clattering across the tile floor and she looks up to find Cameron hovering over her. Her lips move as she grasps for words, but her voice never comes.

“There’s a truck outside,” he reports. “We’ve gotta get out there before this place is completely overrun. There’s just no end to these fucks.”

Roberta casts her eyes down in a sullen effort to locate the fallen magazine.

“I’ve got the keys, but I’ve gotta get out to the garage,” Cameron continues, fetching the magazine as if it were nothing. “I need you to lay down some cover fire for me while I get across. That peashooter gonna hold you over until I reach the garage?”

“I _killed_ a man, Cameron—”

But the words diminish the weight of her crime.

There are no words to articulate the weight of Albert’s eyes staring back at her in the dark.

“You killed _two_ men, sweetheart,” Cameron replies coolly and he offers Roberta a reassuring slap on the shoulder, as if the entire thing is some kind of joke. “It woulda been a bullet for each of us if you hadn’t. Look, I’m not asking you to kill anyone, you’ve just gotta keep their heads down. Understand?”

“Yeah,” she nods along as she reloads the gun with trembling hands. “Yeah, sure. No problem, Cameron.”

Roberta returns to her position in the window as soon as she’s got the gun loaded and she squeezes the trigger, firing without aim: every shadow eats a bullet and the whirlwind of noise diverts attention from Cameron smashing out the side window.

It’s impossible to tell from her current position whether or not she’s doing him any good, but she knows better than to let up on the cover fire in the meantime.

She empties the magazine into the tree line and even fires a couple of blanks.

 _Click. Click_.

Empty.

Roberta ducks back inside the window with the intention of reloading when a loud horn tears through the fog and Cameron’s voice bellows, “Let’s go, Roberta!”

 

The last thing he remembers is swimming – _fighting, crying, running_ – and then everything is dark.

It’s not a pleasant, peaceful darkness like the one brought on by a dreamless sleep, but a terrifying darkness that’s suffocating in its intensity.

 _Drowning_ —

Cameron Burke – _Joey Hudson_ – awakens with a start.

It’s _freezing_.

Ice cold drafts chill his damp clothing, dancing across his skin like a playful ghost, and in that moment it’s impossible to make sense of anything beyond that single sensation. Not that there’s much to see: the room consists of four concrete walls, naked, a concrete floor, scuffed, and a ceiling.

A single flickering bulb hangs from a wire cage, but it’s grown so dim with age that it might as well not be on at all.

There’s a white flash in his mind and Cameron Burke – _Staci Pratt_ – grimaces, shrinking back as if to protect himself from the impending impact of an explosion.

It never comes.

The smell of burning rubber and diesel fuel floods his nose and the fire – there’s fire _everywhere_ – burns hot against his cold, pallid skin. It’s scary and unpleasant and it threatens to swallow him whole, conscious thought and all.

Cameron Burke – _Earl Whitehorse_ – knows he must escape before it’s too late and the fires consume him, so he runs, blind, into the dark forest whose shadows warp into long arms that reach after his ankles, determined to trip him up.

The fear keeps him running long after he loses feeling in his legs.

Everything feels numb.

He can’t breathe—

 

It isn’t until Roberta reaches the truck and her hands search for a grip on the passenger door, smearing blood across the white paint, that she discovers she must have cut her hands up on the broken glass in the window frame.

Both of her hands are riddled with tiny splinters of glass and she doesn’t feel a thing.

“Get in,” Cameron hollers. “We’ve gotta get the fuck out of here.”

Roberta wastes no time climbing into the old truck – and she’s inside not a moment too soon: the door closes behind her with frightening force, force enough to take a foot clean off, as the truck goes barreling off down the old dirt road, leaving behind only a mess of pebbles and dirt. It’s all she can do to pull herself upright in the seat, the gun still hot in her lap, but the roominess of the cab leaves her feeling vulnerable against the night.

Cameron proves to be just as unsteady behind the wheel as he is in the rest of his life: he swerves from shoulder to shoulder in an effort to dodge a spray of bullets that peppers the tailgate.

It takes every ounce of restraint left in Roberta not to be sick.

The trailer becomes little more than a smudge in the rear-view mirror, lost in a veil of fog.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Cameron hisses, his forehead glistening in the reflection of the headlights, soaked in a sheen of sweat. “That was too close. I’d be _dead_ if it weren’t for you, Roberta. We gotta get back, but we gotta be smart: we don’t know who we can trust. Fuckin’ _Nancy_.”

It occurs to Roberta in that moment that during the revelation of Nancy Blackburn’s betrayal everybody else on board the helicopter had been unconscious. She knows this because she remembers the very intimate exchange she shared with Joseph Seed in that moment as clear as anything – and had anyone else been even semi-conscious at the time, they wouldn’t have left her to face him all alone.

Had Cameron been awake the entire time?

“You—”

Without warning, Cameron jerks hard on the steering wheel and, at a glance, it looks as though he’s trying to pry it loose from its base, riding the truck up onto the left tires. “Jesus, they’ve got the roads blocked—”

Their straight shot for Missoula goes right out the window alongside Roberta’s upper half and she grabs onto the truck’s smooth siding to ground herself, smearing more blood to the effect of primal war paint across the truck’s cab.

Only once they’re east-bound does it become apparent that one of the Peggie trucks has peeled itself off the roadblock to give chase.

The passenger of the approaching truck opens fire and forces Roberta back inside the cab.

“They’re tailing us, Cameron. What do we do?”

“Shoot back,” he commands, but he winces as a stray bullet takes out the driver’s mirror and he presses his service weapon into her bloody hands. “For fuck’s sake, just keep ‘em off us!”

There’s no way Roberta is going to make a half-way decent shot out of a moving pickup truck with her hands shredded – and she would have to be half-way crazy to try – but she leans back out the window with the gun firm in her hand.

 _The tires_ , she tells herself as she tries to line up a shot. _Shoot for the tires_ —

Roberta squeezes the trigger.

_Ping! Ping! Ping!_

Three rounds ricochet off of the white frame of the pursuing truck, failing to find their target, but the engine roars to life as they ride Cameron’s bumper.

A sudden jerk to the left prematurely ends her assault and Roberta hisses as she’s pulled back inside the cab of the truck.

“Damn it, Cameron, should I drive?”

Cameron actually has to steal a glance to ensure that she’s joking.

The second roadblock comes with more warning: it’s set up directly in front of an intersection with the intention of forcing them off of the road if they hope to pass it, but the terrain in the Henbane River is far too mountainous to safely navigate in the dark.

Much to Roberta’s surprise, however, Cameron swings a wide turn into the Hollyhock Saloon parking lot that catches their pursuers off-guard, tearing up the gravel and crashing through a flimsy wooden fence out back. The Peggies skid head-first into their own roadblock, a mess of sparks and broken steel in the rear-view mirror.

The gun in Roberta’s lap clatters loudly on the floorboard as the truck bumps and rattles down an unexpectedly steep slope, threatening to bounce right off its axels.

“Jesus Christ,” Roberta swears in her surprise.

Their current course sets them on a fast track down to a stretch of abandoned railroad tracks – a valley that’s become notorious for its decaying remnants of years gone by. Once upon a time those empty boxcars were a jumping place for a party—

 _Those empty boxcars_ —

“Watch out for the trains, Cameron!”

Roberta’s right: they coast straight across a set of abandoned railroad tracks and into a valley of old, rusted out boxcars left to decay in the Montana wilderness. It doesn’t look anything like the tourism brochures that were sold in Missoula, or like the picturesque forests where his uncle took him hunting. It looks industrial and modern, as if it were cut and paste into place just to act as another obstacle.

Cameron only narrowly avoids the corner of the first car on account of Roberta’s warning. Their pursuer is not so lucky: the Peggie pickup truck drives straight into the boxcar at the foot of the hill and the entire front end folds in on itself on impact.

There’s no immediate traces of a fire, but smoke pours out from under the mangled hood, black against the blue-green fog.

“How did you—”

“This is my _home_ , Cameron,” she reminds him before a barrage of bullets forces their heads back down. “Take a left at the next available clearing. There’s no way we’ll make it over the train trestle—”

Cameron offers Roberta a dubious look, but he knows she isn’t wrong.

With the way he’s driving under this rain of gunfire tonight, they’ll wind up at the bottom of the Henbane River.

 

When she appears to him in white lace and a pungent floral fragrance, Cameron convinces himself that they both died at the bottom of the Henbane River.

That train of thought shouldn’t bring him the overwhelming flood of relief that it does, but he just can’t chase away the comfort that seeing her again brings him – even if it means that this might be some kind of afterlife purgatory and they will never make it out of Hope County.

“Roberta—”

But the woman standing before him is not Roberta.

Her hair, lightened from the last vestiges of summer sun, tumbles over her shoulders in just the same way that Roberta’s did in that musty motel room, a golden halo in the morning light. Her face is almost identical and when Cameron reaches out to caress her cheek with his clumsy hand, she doesn’t protest.

It’s up close that the cracks begin to appear in his mind’s carefully constructed lie: there’s a wickedness, a maliciousness in the shadows of her features that are distinctly not Roberta Caine.

“Who are you?”

“Do I really look so much like her that you would forget about your vows, Marshal?”

When the stranger speaks, her voice is light, like flower petals dancing on a soft summer breeze.

Cameron follows her sparkling eyes all the way down to his hands, which sit folded in his lap as she fingers his wedding band.

 _No_ , he wants to say.

He stutters incoherently, but his lips are too numb to form the words.

It doesn’t appear to matter: the woman’s hard blue eyes soften into puddles and she answers for him. “You’ve been unfaithful, haven’t you, Cameron? The guilt is eating you alive.”

 _No_.

This time, he thinks, he doesn’t feel unfaithful.

His marriage has been dead in the water for so long that he can no longer remember a time when there was something between them _worth_ saving. Every promise he’s made to Roberta to file for a divorce as soon as he returns to Missoula has been—

The way the stranger is looking at him, as if looking right through him, catches him off-guard. “If you intend to argue, why is it that you still wear this ring?”

But Cameron doesn’t have an answer to that as it’s the one question he’s still asking himself.

 

The truck rattles violently as it crowns the hill to reveal a paved road on the opposite side.

Cameron places his hand upon Roberta’s knee in his excitement, a gesture made more for his own comfort than for hers, she suspects, but the small smile that dances on his thin lips makes her heart skip.

“Goddamn,” he says and he gives her knee a squeeze. “We’re gonna pull this off—”

“Easy there, tiger.”

They’re still an awful long way from Missoula.

As if to emphasize his excitement, Cameron reaches for Roberta’s hand instead. “We _are_ gonna make it out of this one, Roberta. We _are_.” And she might have just believed him, too, if it weren’t for the roar of an airplane creeping up over the hill.

The airplane – an AdjudiCor painted as black as the midnight sky – is flying far too low to be a coincidence.

“ _Fuck_.”

Roberta arms herself to lean back out the window and take a shot, but Cameron pulls her back inside by the collar of her shirt before she can do it. “Damn it, Roberta, you’re not gonna make a dent with _that_.”

Bullets rain down from the sky and pepper the passenger window.

Had it not been for Cameron’s quick reflexes just now, she most certainly would have lost her head in the attack. Their eyes meet briefly as the plane flies overhead and that’s when the world goes white: an explosion tears up a field and surrounding forest just ahead of the truck, erupting into flames.

Cameron swings a wide turn to avoid the crater left behind by the bomb, but it’s becoming all too clear just how much trouble they’re in.

For the first time since just before the helicopter went down Roberta sees real fear in Cameron’s eyes.

Back then he had been forced to face the fact that his badge and service weapon were no longer just for show. He was the ranking officer in Hope County that night and it wasn’t until that very moment he had felt the full weight of the responsibility.

His uncle, the Montana state governor, couldn’t do shit to save him once he had climbed out of that helicopter at Joseph Seed’s compound.

For the first time in his life Cameron had been afraid to die.

But the fear that exists within him now is different.

He’s no longer anything more than a man in a dire situation and he doesn’t even know if he’s going to live to see the sun come up. It’s impossible to know how much time he’s got left with the way the night is progressing and, what’s more, how much of that time will be shared with Roberta.

If he loses her before the night is over, he’s not confident that he’s going to have the strength to keep pushing forward.

How could he go home and face his wife as if nothing had ever happened?

“What do we do?” Roberta asks, as if he’s got all the answers.

But he doesn’t.

They can’t fight _this_.

“We’re gonna keep going,” Cameron resolves. “There’s nothing else we _can_ do.”

The tires, slick with dew and fog, scream against the pavement and in that moment Roberta hears the blood-curdling scream of Joey Hudson, sees the silhouette as she fought for her life cast against the firelight.

In the cockpit the shadows of Earl Whitehorse and Staci Pratt danced like a ballet. The two didn’t always see eye-to-eye – due in no small part to their conflicting opinions of Roberta – but Earl is too old-fashioned to leave a man behind over such a petty quarrel.

That man would have given himself for any one of his deputies in a heartbeat.

Staci is only a child, for God’s sake—

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Cameron hisses and the truck jerks to the right, slamming Roberta into the passenger door hard enough to leave a bruise.

As if on cue, the little trailing whistle descends into a bright white flash of light that completely obscures the train trestle up ahead, kicking up smoke and dust, the effects of which are only worsened by the lack of a proper windshield on the truck.

It’s a miracle that they’re still on the road at all, but somehow Cameron never loses sight of what’s important.

They _have_ to get out of Hope County alive.

 _Together_ —

The whirlwind obscures a roadblock that lies in wait on the other side of the train trestle, leaving them too little, too late to find an alternative: they drive straight through, wooden barricades crushing beneath the weight of the truck, splintering into the grille, while the barbed wire underfoot pierces all four tires.

From the sidelines of the roadblock angry men holler obscenities and bullets tear through the pickup truck’s steel siding like tissue paper.

By the opposite end of the roadblock the truck is rattling along and the gunfire has slowed, so Roberta pops back out of the truck cab in order to survey the damage. There’s no going back now, she knows, but the road ahead looks clear.

It’s a straight shot across the Henbane River Bridge and there isn’t a truck in sight.

Their straight shot to Missoula—

“Roberta!” Cameron cries out, but it’s far too loud for Roberta to hear him.

He instead hooks his arm around her waist and pulls her back inside the truck cab, almost all the way back into his lap, moments before the bomb touches down.

That quick thinking is the only thing that prevents her from being torn right in half by the force of the blast – but there’s no time to digest that reality before the explosion rips up the bridge ahead and sends the truck coasting right over the side.

Their straight shot to Missoula becomes a straight shot to the bottom of the Henbane River.


	7. Prologue

_It hurts_ —

Roberta Caine’s lungs are on fire.

Everything hurts: her arms, her legs, her chest, her head. It feels as if she’s just been run over by a truck and left here to die in a blissful agony.

In the seat next to her Cameron Burke fights the restraint of the seat belt.

 _Déjà vu_.

The site of the helicopter crash returns to her as plain as day. Everything had felt so hot – it had been an unseasonably warm night for September to begin with – but now everything is alarmingly cold. In fact, it’s not just cold. It’s _freezing_.

She momentarily entertains the idea that this is what death might feel like, but the headlights of the pickup truck cast a blue-green glow out into the dark and illuminate what appear to be pieces of debris from the explosion on the bridge.

Large chunks of steel sink slowly, like a ballet of snowflakes on a still winter night.

That’s when it occurs to Roberta that she’s drowning.

Cameron manages to get himself free and he swims past the broken windshield as if he’s running in slow motion. The task of propelling himself through the water seems to bring him great difficulty. He’ll never make it to the surface with that utility vest on.

But he’s definitely going to make it farther than Roberta will if she doesn’t at least _try_.

As it turns out, escaping from the truck is the easy part: she hadn’t bothered with her own seat belt on account of being in and out the cab the entire drive. The real trouble comes in the form of four limbs weighed down like cinder blocks under the fabric of her uniform, making the rippling surface above little more than a twinkle in the moonlight.

The boots and the gloves go first because they’re the easiest to cast off mid-stroke, but it’s the belt buckle that really trips Roberta up.

The jeans have to go.

The leather of the belt has become so slick in the water that it slips through her fingers like a large eel, forcing her to wrestle with the silver buckle. Once loose, however, she’s able to shimmy right out of the jeans and she allows gravity to take its course with them, weighed down to the bottom of the river by the utility belt still looped through the belt rings.

She demonstrates a lot less patience when it comes to the shirt because the threads tear like tissue paper, so one good pull rips all of the buttons loose and it rolls right off of her back.

In a tangle of hunter green cotton, Roberta’s new badge sinks to the bottom of the Henbane River.

By the time she breaks the surface she’s naked down to her skivvies.

But she’s _alive_.

Roberta coughs and chokes as she sucks in the hot, muggy air – as much as her screaming lungs can carry. There’s nothing subtle about her hysterics, but she propels herself towards the closest shore before she really _does_ drown in her excitement.

The silt of the shore feels cool against her bare skin as she crawls on bruised hands and knees, only collapsing the catch her breath once she’s completely out of the dark water.

 _Alive_ —

“There were two in the truck!” A man’s voice – a Peggie’s voice – hollers from somewhere in the fog and it’s all Roberta can do to turn her face in the direction of the sound. “Check the shoreline!”

Through the thick fog cover she can barely make out the silhouette of the Henbane River Bridge, where thick, wafting trails of black smoke are the only remaining indication that an explosion had occurred only minutes earlier.

“No!” A second voice shouts.

Roberta recognizes it to be the voice of Cameron Burke.

A large spot of light appears, trapped within the fog at the base of the bridge.

One part of her registers that the Peggies will be upon her at any moment if she doesn’t pick herself up and get into the cover of the tree line in order to avoid capture, but another part of her can’t muster the will to find her feet.

In the distance the flashlights dance within the fog and cast fleeting silhouettes of human figures.

 

“Get off me!” Cameron bites out between grit teeth. “I am a United States Federal Marshal—”

The Peggie ringleader, a scrawny man who appears to be in his late forties, drops the butt of his shotgun like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, smashing Cameron across the back of the head with force enough to draw blood.

His wiry build is disarming: for most people the impact of the blow would have served as a warning, but Cameron is not most people.

“The girl,” a second member of the Peggie circus hisses and he circles around the recovering marshal like a predatory beast. He’s missing more than a couple of teeth, adding a uniquely airy lisp to his speech. “You’re gonna tell us where the girl is, _now_ , if you wanna live long enough to see her again.”

The ringleader stands to the side and swings that shotgun in his hands absently, as if it were a cheerleader’s baton.

But Cameron purses his lips and snarls.

If Roberta Caine is dead in the Henbane River, he doesn’t want to know.

If Roberta Caine is alive in the Henbane River, however, he doesn’t want the Peggies to know.

“Fuck you,” is what he settles on as his retort to the question, but his voice comes as more of a waterlogged groan than a threat that carries any weight. “Fuck _you_.”

“Looks like this one needs a little Faith,” decides the ringleader most arbitrarily and, without warning, the gun comes down again with strength enough to wipe the fight clean out of Cameron Burke. “Take him to the Pilgrimage.”

 

Roberta grimaces at the thought of picking herself up and running off into the forest once again.

Her body is cold right through to the bone, numbed from the icy chill of the Henbane River mid-September, but her muscles are on fire from the night’s exertion and there’s a pain in her head that’s pounding like a drum.

Joseph Seed has Cameron Burke.

Joseph Seed has Joey Hudson and Staci Pratt and Earl Whitehorse.

But Joseph Seed does not have Roberta Caine.

No matter how badly her body argues that she should stay right where she is until she’s been found, to end the ruse without a fight and submit to her fate at the hands of Joseph Seed, she knows that she can’t obey it. Even without a badge she is still a deputy sheriff of the Hope County Sheriff’s Office – and the whole of Hope County is depending on her tonight.

As Cameron is cuffed with his own handcuffs and carried up the opposite shore like an old sack of potatoes, Roberta becomes the only person the people _can_ depend on.

Roberta Caine is all that remains of the law in Hope County, Montana.

That puts an immense weight on her shoulders.

“Find the other one!” A voice bellows from across the river’s mouth, echoing through the fog to create the illusion that it’s coming from everywhere all at once.

Her hands, numb from the cold water, slip in the silt and gravel stone when she tries to lift herself up. She slides helplessly, smearing her naked skin with the clay-like mud of the shore, but ultimately she lands right back down, hard, on the damp earth.

As she scrabbles about in preparation to try again, the shimmer of a gun barrel appears in her peripheral and puts a swift end to her struggle.

She’s too late.

 

_My children…_

 

Joey Hudson awakens with a start.

It’s _freezing_.

It takes every ounce of strength left within her to suppress the fear – _the bile_ – that rises in her throat because with this duct tape over her mouth there’s nowhere else for it to go.

The last of her nerves were shot three hours ago, when the only thing her mind could process was the dozens of hands upon her body, and it was all she could do to project herself back into the comfort of her childhood home. She’s been little more than a bundle of raw human emotion since then.

Like an open sore.

Her temper flares in violent bursts before simmering into a fresh set of tears, but her fight is constant as she rocks back and forth against her restraints. Every time she entertains the thought that she’s fought to her wit’s end, she forced to sit in silence and listen to the sobs of others just like her, bound into an old office chair and gagged so that they cannot cry out.

Forfeit is not an option for a deputy sheriff when the lives of so many innocent people are on the line.

But, try as she might, Joey cannot see a thing past her own damn nose.

That’s when a candle flickers to life and illuminates the face of a man who looks far too pleased with himself to be anyone other than John Seed.

“Mmm!” Joey tries to speak against the tape, but it’s useless.

John’s blue eyes follow the candle’s flickering flame as he runs it along her bruised body, taking in every inch of her with careful precision – but he never once lays a hand on her. He watches, bemused, as she spasms and twitches in anticipation, unable to say a word.

“Are you ready for your confession, Deputy?”

 

_Hmm mmm… hmm mmm… hmm mmm mmm mmm…_

 

 _We must give thanks to God_.

 

Staci Pratt grimaces, shrinking back as if to protect himself from the pain.

His face is broken in every way imaginable and he’s not certain that the helicopter crash is solely to blame, but he doesn’t remember a thing prior to waking up bound to a chair, trembling hands bloody and raw from fighting his restraints.

At the very first signs of life, however, a large silhouette of a man appears in his peripheral and any fight left within him dies.

Staci has always kept himself in good shape, but this man is _huge_.

He stands – _towers_ – over the deputy and his face splits with such a devilish grin that Staci’s not entirely convinced the man is even real.

The pain that follows is definitely real, though.

It comes as such a sudden and intense shock that Staci can’t find the voice to scream, instead offering only a high-pitched squeak and the Devil holds in his large, monstrous hand a pair of pliers clamped tight to what looks to be a bloody fingernail.

In spite of his better judgement, Staci looks down toward his mangled hand and cries unabashedly.

 

_Hmm mmm… hmm mmm… hmm mmm…_

 

 _The day I have promised to you has arrived_.

 

Earl Whitehorse knows he must escape before it’s too late, so he runs, blind, after her ghost.

Her messy brown hair, sun-kissed at the tips from a long summer, tumbles down her lace-clad back as she turns to throw him a blue-eyed smile, wild and young and beautiful, even if a little bit crooked.

He would know that face anywhere: that’s Roberta Caine.

He chases after the shadow of that freckle-faced kid he once knew, chasing her image late into the night.

It doesn’t seem to matter how far he runs, however, for the sheriff cannot keep up with her youthful vibrance. Just like the bright-eyed smile he used to know, it’s fleeting, disappearing and reappearing within the fog as if she had come from his past come to haunt him.

He runs for so long without rest that his feet become blistered within his boots and his dehydrated lips bleed when they crack, but he doesn’t _feel_ the ill effects within the sanctity of the blue-green mist.

In fact, he feels twenty years younger – like that heart attack fourteen years ago is someone else’s memory.

When, at last, the woman stops amid a misty field of white bell flowers and allows herself to be caught, the hand that extends toward her uncharacteristically delicate shoulder trembles with fear.

 

_Hmm mmm… hmm mmm… hmm mmm mmm mmm…_

 

 _Everything I’ve told you has come true_.

 

A woman’s delicate fingers brush away Cameron Burke’s tears with the hollow chill of a ghost.

He realises in the way his hand trembles as it rises to meet hers that there has always been an underlying current of fear within him – but that _she_ had made him blind to it. _She_ had made him feel so brave that come the dawn there was no way he could back down from his intent to make the arrest.

It wasn’t the men that awaited them at Joseph’s church that had frightened him that night. It was the thought of looking weak in front of _her_.

Was Roberta Caine really worth all of _this_?

Right then Cameron entertains the possibility of waking up from this nightmare into the loving arms of his wife at home and he tries to imagine the sweet nothings she might whisper in his ear, but the words he finds wrapped up in her sweet voice are of no comfort to him now.

 _You’re supposed to be a cop, aren’t you?_ Was her default line, unintentionally accusatory, reinforcing the cage that Cameron had built for himself under years of pressure. _You aren’t supposed to be afraid_.

But he _was_ afraid.

He _is_ afraid.

And it’s only now that he realises he’s been so afraid that he’s clung to that same illusion in front of Roberta, long after he knew he didn’t have to.

When he was holding Roberta’s hand that night in Missoula, everything had seemed so clear in his mind: he knew then exactly who it was that he wanted to become, but Roberta is gone now and the light in his life has gone out, leaving him all alone in a world of darkness.

Cameron no longer knows who he’s supposed to be.

“The answers you seek already exist within you,” the woman holding onto his hand says in a whisper that takes his breath away. “Come, walk with me and you will find your path.”

“I—”

“All you need is a little Faith.”

 

_The authorities who tried to take me from you are now in the loving embrace of my Family…_

 

A single candle burns in the window of a log cabin and Roberta Caine’s mind recalls the fate of a man on a boardwalk in the middle of the forest, dark and alone, who had his head caved in from the pressure of a single birch branch.

There had been another man out in the forest that night – and she had _killed_ him with her own two hands.

But Roberta has never _killed_ anyone.

 

 _… save for one_.

 

A flash of white light shines within the dark – a light so bright that it chases away the fog – and then she’s falling.

For the first time in her swimming state of semi-consciousness Roberta feels afraid.

 

 _But this wayward soul will be found – they will be punished – and, in the end, they will see our glorious purpose_.

 

_T’was blind, but now I see—_

 

 _I am your Father. You are my Children. And together we will march to_ —

 

Roberta Caine awakens with a start.

It’s _freezing_.

She isn’t wearing any clothes except for her undergarments, which have been soaked transparent and cling to her freckled skin, bloated and puffy. Her hair sticks in large clumps and it tickles her face and neck, but when she tries, she can’t raise a hand to brush it aside.

There’s a white flash in her mind and she grimaces, shrinking back as if to protect herself against the impending impact of an explosion.

It never comes.

The smell of burning rubber and diesel fuel floods her nose and the fire – there’s fire _everywhere_ – burns hot against her cold, pallid skin. It’s scary and unpleasant and it threatens to swallow her whole, conscious thought and all.

Roberta knows she must escape before it’s too late and the fires consume her, so she runs, blind, into the dark forest whose shadows warp into long arms that reach after her ankles, determined to trip her up.

The fear keeps her running long after she loses feeling in her legs.

Everything feels numb.

It takes time for her eyes to adjust to the dim white light which spills in through a naked door frame at the far side of the room.

 _Concrete_ , she determines, if the colour and the temperature of the solid ground beneath her are anything to go by.

Roberta believes herself to be underground.

Hope County is dotted with an alarming number of underground bomb shelters, most little more than relics of the Cold War era, and all built in response to the government’s decision to establish the Black Horse Peak Launch Complex within Holland Valley. She never much liked the thought of being underground, but the shock keeps the fear at bay while she tries to decipher the scope of her situation.

It isn’t until she tries to right herself that she discovers her hands have been bound by a thick plastic zip tie that’s been encircled snug around a thin metal bed frame. A single pull indicates that the frame is loose, but even if she managed to pry it free she would never be able to lug it out of here.

She’s not even certain she has the fight left in her to make that a reality.

Whoever had found her knew exactly what they were doing when it comes to taking a prisoner—

 _Joseph Seed_ , Cameron’s voice echoes from within the dark. _I have a warrant issued for your arrest on the suspicion of kidnapping with the intent to harm_.

Instinct overpowers reason and Roberta begins to struggle illogically against the plastic bind that holds her into place. It’s a half-assed effort on account of her semi-conscious state, but the thought of being at Joseph’s mercy is enough to make her feel sick and, like an animal in a trap, adrenaline heats up within her veins like molten lava.

So lost in her fight is she that she doesn’t notice the figure standing in the door, watching over her fight in equal parts pity and bemusement.

Only once Roberta deems her efforts to be in vain does the figure speak: “Deputy.”

 _No_ —

Roberta turns her face up to the sound of that voice like a deer caught in the headlights and all of her fight evaporates. It doesn’t take her long to trace the voice to the silhouette of a man and relief washes over her when she deduces that it’s _not_ Joseph Seed.

That means Joseph _was_ wrong.

Someone _had_ come to save her.

Her surprise at the turn in events must be written all over her face then because the man lets out a breathy laugh, as if doing so causes him some pain. “I knew your father, once upon a time. Had no idea _this_ is where you would end up.”

The man saunters across the room and picks up an old, rickety chair along the way, on which he takes a heavy seat by her side.

He’s completely bald with only a tuft of grey left upon his chin and, behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes are sunken and tired. His skin shows the first traces of liver spots – indicative of an outdoorsman – but even behind the oldness that has crept up on him like a ghost is the lingering traces of familiarity.

Roberta has seen this man before, but she cannot place when or where.

“These cultists, they all think the world is coming to an end now – they’ve been waiting for it, for _years_ ,” the man accuses. “They’ve been waiting for somebody to come along and fulfill their prophecy, to kick off their goddamn Holy War.”

The man leans back into his chair for a long moment of contemplative silence before he unsheathes a large hunting knife, the kind one might use to skin a small rodent.

Like the terrified jackrabbit she had previously shown herself to be when caught in his trap.

“Well, you sure as shit kicked, kid.”

But even as the blade shimmers, sharp, in the blue-green light of the old bunker, Roberta stares up at the man as silent as a stone.

There’s no fight left in her.

“The smartest thing for me to do would just be to hand you over,” the stranger leers, provocative, but to no response.

There’s nothing left behind those glassy blue eyes but the hollow shell of a woman.

He even goes so far as to snap his fingers – one, two, three – in her expressionless face, but she blinks only once, slow and unseeing. “Do you know where you are, Deputy?”

 _A man in a finely-pressed uniform with a decorated breast_ —

 _The lingering taste of sweet strawberry jam_ —

 _An outgoing helicopter_ —

“ _Fuck_.”

The man heaves a sigh that reminds her too much of Cameron Burke and that’s when their eyes meet.

He wastes no time in cutting Roberta loose at the first sign of life and he sits back to sheath his knife as she takes in the red welts left on her skin from her struggle.

“Am I—?”

But the question never comes.

“We’ll talk real soon,” the man assures her, but his brow is heavy – there’s no _good_ news. “Get yourself some proper clothes from the wardrobe there and, once you’re decent, you come and find me. We’ll see if we can… ‘un-fuck’ this situation.”

As he stands from his seat and crosses the room in a heavy silence, Roberta manages to choke out a ‘thank you’.


End file.
